Fathers are condemning their children to poverty

It goes both ways.

I know a father who had a traumatic brain injury where his mind is full of holes and he is not even aware of the holes so he comes across as shifty, he was long ordered to pay child support at a level he just could not afford and was accused of malingering about his disability. From his viewpoint and the viewpoint of the women he spent the next ten years with he was a victim of a system that put women first.

The most important consequence of the mid 1990’s welfare reform in the US was that it cracked down on ‘deadbeat dads’, prior to that you could cross state lines to avoid paying child support and there was nothing they could do to stop you, now not paying child support is a federal crime.

For a while I worked at a mediation center where we did of parenting plans for separated, divorced and otherwise apart couples and it was a common theme that the man was ‘working off the books’ with the woman’s knowledge and consent because both members of the couple seemed to think that the child support system was unjust —- particularly for men working in the lower tier of blue collar and service jobs.

When TWO THIRDS of fathers aren't paying obligations, that tells you the problem is a fundamentally broken system rather than jerks just needing to be shamed and punished harder.