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by Damon Carr, For New Pittsburgh Courier
Child support has been a recurring topic on my Facebook private group page. This is a hot topic in both hair salons and barber shops around the world. However, in both settings, the audience is either majority women or majority men. As a result in both settings you’re generally hearing one side of the story. What makes this conversation interesting on my Facebook page is both men and women offer their views and opinions.
One of our discussions was based on a TikTok video that went viral. In this video a woman who is divorced and remarried is detailing her experience with the Child Support Enforcement Agency. Her ex-husband is the father of their 4-year old son. He, too, is remarried. He is currently paying $69 per week or $276 dollar per month in child support. Her ex-husband got a new job. The Child Support Enforcement Agency initiated a court proceeding to have the child support payments modified. According to her, the agency felt she deserved an increase in payment. She disagreed. She said that $276 is enough to help provide for their 4-year-old child. She said she can pay her own bills and that she understands this man has a family, other children and his own bills to pay. She then goes on a tirade about women abusing the child support system for their own selfish gain. She said she hears women saying things like, “that little child support doesn’t pay half my bills.” She said child support isn’t supposed to pay your bills. It’s supposed to help take care of the child.
Below are a few comments from people in our Facebook group:
PREACH WOMAN PREACH!!!!
~Torry
This is amazing! I wish more women thought this way!!
~Anna
Child support was put in place for deadbeat dads. That money doesn’t cover much. I know this firsthand. However, some men are being taken advantage of. Men need to step up to reform laws that were put in place years ago. I understand both sides of the child support plight.
~Juanita
From my studies of child support and its origination, child support in America was designed for children which were abandoned and separated from their families in the 1950s welfare system; as well as, families in poverty due to separation from divorce. Most American women/wives in the 1950s & 1960s were homemakers who depended on their men/husbands to financially provide for them and their children. When I was expecting my first child, I told my child’s father, “I am not looking to take your money and place you on child support! Just ‘Man-Up’ and help raise our child. Provide for his needs when needed.” I never sought modification for an increase in child support payments. He didn’t own up to his end of the bargain. He missed out on opportunities to cultivate the seed that he planted. His loss!
~Leslie
She’s 100 percent accurate with her statement. I recently went to court to get off of child support. I never should have been on it. You’d think I was holding my child’s mom hostage based on their line of questioning.
Are you sure you are OK with this? Are you speaking on your own free will? We had three separate appearances in court over a six-month period. To this day, they still threaten me and tell her that she needs to reconsider.
Child support for the Black male is not designed for support. It is designed to check and destroy. A man working multiple jobs in order to pay child support and other bills reduces the time a man has to spend with the child. If you miss child support payments, you’re subject to incarceration and/or license suspension. You can’t earn money while in jail. It’s hard to get to work without a driver’s license. A man in jail risks losing his job.
~Will
My children’s mom’s current boyfriend is in prison doing 8 years because he put himself on child support and was giving her $793 a month for one child.
His child’s mom felt that $793 wasn’t enough to take care of her four children. Keep in mind that he’s the biological father of only one of her four children. Being the vindictive person that she is, she had her oldest daughter lie and say he sexually assaulted her when she was 12 years old. This is all a made up lie because $793 a month for one child wasn’t enough.
~John
I don’t know what planet she lives on where $69 per week helps to support a child. Recreational expenses aside, the monthly cost of raising a child demands more than $69 per week. I can’t stand women like her because they wanna make it seem like the status quo of women asking for child support are those who want somebody to pay their bills and that’s bull. Pay your fair share! What’s hard about that? It doesn’t make anyone any less of a woman or mom for seeking fair and justifiable child support.
~ Olivia
Damon here: Men in general hate paying child support. It’s a touchy topic. Let me start with something we can all agree on. Generally speaking, single parents struggle financially; single mothers in particular.
What’s interesting to me is I observed many men willing to take on car payments of $600 per month or more but frown upon paying $500 per month in child support.
It’s not child support in and of itself that men frown upon, it’s the lack of control he has with the money taken from him. You can be paying child support and you still have to fight for visitation rights. Secondly, you have zero control over how money is spent. Mom could be a spendthrift, a user, a woman who gives her money to her deadbeat boyfriend. It doesn’t matter. You still have to pay child support until the courts says otherwise.
Uncle Sam didn’t impregnate the child’s mother. If the mother is receiving some type of government assistance, the child’s mom is required to provide the father’s information so that they can rightfully put ownership and responsibility on the child’s father as opposed to the government.
When child support is calculated, it takes both parents’ income, other dependents, and various expenses into the equation in an effort to make it an equitable payment amount. It doesn’t take various loans into consideration because child’s care should be a higher priority than loan payments.
If mom is gainfully employed with no government assistance, it’s her choice to decide whether to file for child support or not.
If both mom and dad are gainfully employed with benefits and the father is a stand up guy, I think it’s best to work out child care, child support, and visitation arrangements outside of the court system. If dad is a deadbeat, an uninvolved father, or if mom is receiving government assistance…child support it is.
(Damon Carr, Money Coach can be reached @ 412-216-1013 or visit his website @ www.damonmoneycoach.com)
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