Role of Divorce and Single-Parenting in Children Poverty - Essay Example

Introduction The role that divorce and single-parenting play in creating poverty among children is a hotly debated issue. While some say that the answer to child poverty is encouraging mothers and fathers to get married and stay married to each other, many people feel that is an unrealistic goal and not appropriate in many instances. Most people would agree, however, that teaching fathers, whether married to the mother of their children to be more engaged and involved in the upbringing of their children is important not just for monetary reasons, but for the mental and physical health of their children. The task of deciding how to engage fathers with their families is primarily under the purview of the provinces. Most provinces offer classes, mediation, and information for fathers and mothers on how fathers can maintain contact and be a positive influence in the lives of their children even after a divorce. Most provinces also offer such things as mental health services for children of separated or divorced parents. Although unstated, the policy of most provinces seems to be to try to keep the father mentally and physically involved with children even if they are not married or in a relationship with the mother. Unfortunately, the services offered to fathers seem to be almost an after-thought. Especially given the uphill battle unmarried fathers face in the Divorce Act. The primary target of the various departments is the single mother. Like most social welfare programs, the target of these policies is poor families. The Divorce Act complicates the relationship of poor faterhs with their children because poor fathers are more likely not able to meet the demands of their divorce or child-support decrees. At the same time, while not having a father affects all children, the results are especially damaging when the mother is poor. Similarly, tax benefits and allowances at the national and local levels (e.g. Canada Child Tax Benefit and national Child Benefit Supplement) are exclusively for the primary custody holder of the child. Meaning that although he is financially responsible for his children, fathers, even the very poor fathers, do not receive any support in trying to care for their child. This paper will show that while these efforts at engaging fathers are good and noble, the programs don't go far enough in encouraging parental involvement or assiting fathers who want to do the right thing for their children. Furthermore, those policies that try to encourage fathers to be more involved with their children are targeted primarily toward poor families, when in fact children of all economic classes would benefit from having fathers who better knew how to parent. Method In order to figure out provincial policies on educating and engaging fathers in the parenting process, I looked at reports published by various local governments. I also looked at what services were available to parents and specifically to fathers and to divorcing or separated families. There is a large amount of literature in the journals on the role of fathers in contributing to or helping to eliminate child poverty. The literature nearly universally agrees that the financial and parental contributions of a father are one of the most effective ways or reducing the number of children in poverty. Some of the literature is strongly in support of marriage, suggesting that the way to bring down the numbers of children living in poverty, it would be best to encourage unmarried mothers to marry and to help couples that are married stay that way. Others suggest that it would be far better to teach fathers how to be good parents and to provide them with support so that they can help provide for their families whether or not they live with them. The governments seem to take this line. While many of the provinces offer some sort of marriage counseling, the vast majority of the services offered do not take into account whether or not the parents are married. Issues Addressed by the Policy The primary issue addressed by this policy is redressing childhood poverty, which in Canada is strongly associated with single mother households. According to a report published in 1996 by the National Council on Welfare, the poverty rate among single mothers was 57.3%. In 1997, single-mother families comprised 15.8% of the total number of Canadian families. Furthermore, astudy by Don Kerr and Alain Belanger estimated that single-mother families only made 93% of what they needed to survive, that is, their need to income ration was .93. Compare that to 2.1 when there are two wage earners in a household. Over the course of a 16 year reporting period, the Kerr and Belanger found that overall, families with young children became better-off financially over time, but that the increase in single-parent families had a detrimental effect. They write, The most difficult trend, from the point of view of meeting the economic needs of children, has been an ongoing growth in the number of lone parent families. As indicated in the current analysis, a growing proportion of families headed by lone parents appears to be the single most important demographic change to shape the economic conditions of particularly young children(Kerr and Belanger, 1996) There are secondary issues that are very important, however. According to StatCan, children from single-parent families are much more likely to suffer from various mental and mood disorders. For example, 15.6% of children in single-parent households suffer from hyperactivity while only 9.6% of children in two-parent homes have the same affliction. Similarly, 17.2% of children in single-mother households had an emotional disorder, as opposed to just 8.1% of children living with two parents. Overall, 40.6% of children living with just their mothers had one or more behavioral problems. Only 23.6% of children who lived with both parents had one or more of these problems (StatCan, 1996). Of course there are many people who stand to benefit from reducing the number of children who live in poverty. Reducing the number of children who live in poverty will almost inevitably reduce the number of adults who rely on social welfare, saving the taxpayers money. Children who have more money are less likely to suffer from behavioral problems that can disrupt education and classrooms, although many sociologists would disagree that lack of money is the primary problem (Bianchi, 1999). The children and families themselves, of course, benefit from having more resources. Children grow up to provide resources for the country as a whole, meeting the needs of the young then are really an investment in the future of the country. A Brief History of a Unified Policy Regarding the Role of Fathers in Child Welfare. To put it simply, there is little in the way of a formal policy at any level encouraging fathers to take a more active role with their children. The idea has long been the territory of social conservatives, who see the statistics as evidence that marriage is a vital component of society, that the needs of children as well as their mothers would best be met if the parents were married to each other. The idea started gaining credence with key liberals in the late 1990's. One example of this took place in May of 1996, Justice Minister Allen Rock, a liberal, introduced a bill in Alberta designed to punish parents who don't pay child support. The bill was very harsh and, in it's original form, there was no allowances for pay cuts or sudden loss of work. Ms. Anne Cools, liberal senator from, a feminist, and perhaps most importantly, a member of the committee that was overseeing the drafting of the bill, broke rank and joined the Tories in defeating the bill. Anne Cools is quoted as saying at the time, "There's a deeper issue at stake here. The issue is whether children need both parents. If they do, then the law better start encouraging parents to cooperate with each other, even if they are getting divorced." (Woodard, 1997) Over the last 7 years, fathers and those who advocate for them have slowly begun to make their voices heard on these issues and new programs for fathers have appeared throughout the provinces. Policy Goals In terms of policy, the goal is to incorporate men more fully into the lives of their children thereby staving off poverty and behavioral problems. Even if they are not involved emotionally in their child's life, the government wants strong laws to ensure that the father is financially responsible for the child. Creating policy that balances the need for leniency in some cases for fathers who are really doing the best they can with that small percentage of fathers who are deadbeats. The emerging policy also focuses on parenting education for fathers. To the extent that child poverty is caused by marriage failures, politicians hope to remedy that by keeping trying to facilitate the maintainence of the father-child bond after divorce. Policy Values The policy involves changing the Divorce Act, among other things, to be a little kinder to men who are really trying. Part of this change in attitude towards fathers is a byproduct of the recognition of how important men are in the lives of their children, not just for money and economic support, but also for psycho-social reasons; discipline, achievement, and self-esteem. A report by the United Nations Population Fund says that, Women's lives are usually described in terms of motherhood, while men's lives are usually characterized as heads of households, or wage-earners. Men's role as fathers tend to be vague. Yet, men's commitment to their children is key to the quality of family life and the prospects of the next generation. The 'traditional family' structure -in which the mothers are the care-givers and the fathers the income earners-has become, to a large extent, a myth. It is, however, a myth that is upheld by social and economic policy. On the domestic front, while women have taken on an increasing role in providing income for their families, men have not taken up their share of responsibility in family life. Responsibility for children, in particular, is still seen as belonging to the mother (UNFPA, 1997). The traditional roles of women and men within the context of western society dictated that women could raise a child just fine all by herself provided she had financial support. Fathers were then punished when the realtionship with the mother of the children didn't work out. The Divorce Act, although it has been amended to be less so, is still very hostile towards men. Often times, the men who are the most victimized by these policies are the ones who want to do play a larger role in the psychological as well as the financial well-being of their children, but they lack the monetary resources to live up the court order and cannot afford an attorney to help them have the divorce decree amended to something more suitable. The emergence of more father-friendly policy is a direct result of the recognition that a good father is much more than a paycheck. Method of Policy Making To a large extent, this expansion of social welfare programs to include fathers and the new rights granted to fathers in divorce and paternity guidelines throughout the country has been a battle fought in both traditional courts and the court of public opinion. Indeed, new programs that are inclusive of fathers are largely the result of a number of heartbreaking high profile cases in which the father is a victim of a mother's maliciousness. One widely publicized case was that of Darrin White, a resident of British Columbia. White killed himself in March of 2000, shortly after a run-in with the tragically unfair divorce act. White had been paying child-support for his 14 year old daughter when he and his current wife filed for divorce. On March 1, a BC judge ordered White to pay $1,071 per month in child support and another $1000 a month in alimony. At the time, White was on stress leave from his job and only making $950 a month in net income (O'Neil and Leo, 2000). There has also been a groundswell of grass-roots support to remove discriminatory and punitive language from the divorce act and other social welfare legislation. There are currently over forty groups in various provinces lobbying the government at all levels to be more fair to men. The group "Fathers Are Capable Too" is currently involved in a court challenge to language in the Divorce Act. Like many civil rights acts that have come before, fathers in Canada are struggling to assert their rights to a government that isn't necessarily friendly to their needs. The liberal government, though it has expressed sympathy for the plight of these men, has not taken the necessary steps in adjusting the laws to make them more father-friendly. Local governments have been more responsive, setting up clinics and classes on co-parenting for divorced or never-married parents. Effects of the Policy The policy is evolving every day, and some of the effects are already taking place. There is more publicity on the issue of father invovement and how it is connected to the financial and mental well-being of children. In May of 1999 the Minister of Justice recognized the concerns of fathers, endorsing the idea to replace words like "custody" and "access" with non-adversarial language. She also wanted to explore enforcing access better, having the parents create plans and contracts with respect to how they were going to parent their children from seperate households and she encouraged parents to take advantage of dispute resolution as opposed to coming into court. Hopefully, sometime in the near future, the effect of the policy will be that good fathers can spend more time with their children. That fathers are given equal access to job training so they can better support their children, whether they live with them or not, and that the introduction of men back into the lives of poor women and children will reduce the amount of stress on single mothers and help abate some of the psycho-social problems that are linked to not having a male parent in children. Conclusion The only alternative to creating policy that lets men back in the lives of their children is simply not creating the policy and letting things go on as they have. There maybe, on the other hand, other ways to go about letting men be dads. Parenting classes, alterations to the Divorce Act, and alternative dispute resolution are all ways that have been mentioned in this paper in order to achieve rights for fathers. Another way to go about this is to make sure the public is thoroughly educated about the importance of men in the lives of children. It is also important for us, as a society, to recognize that the stereotypical male and his "place' are no more valid than the stereotypes about females and their place in society. A system that places less importance on money and more importance on the other characteristics that make a good father is sorely needed. It is my opinion that all of these things need to take place in order for the system to be truly fair and equitable. Bibliography Allen, D. (1993) "Welfare and the Family: The Canadian Experience."Journal of Labor Economics 11(1) 201-223. Bala, N. (1999) A Report from Canada's 'Gender War Zone': Reforming the Child Related Provisions of the Divorce Act." Canadian Journal of Family Law 16 (2). Bianchi, S. (1999) " Feminization of Poverty:Trends, Reltive Risks, Causes and Consequences." Annual Review of Sociology 25, pgs307-333 Kerr, D and Belanger, A (2001) "Family Change and the Economic Well-Being of Pre-school Age Children." Report on the Demographic Situation in Canada 2000: Current Demographic Analysis Statistics Canada. Catalogue no. 91-209-XPE. Koontz, S; Folbre, N. (2002) "Marriage, Poverty and Public Policy: A Discussion Paper from the Council on Contemporary Families." Prepared for the Fifith Annual CCF conference Apriol 26-April28, 2002. Viewed online 11/12/05 at http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/briefing.html StatCan Staff (1996) "Growing Up in Canada: National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth." Human Resources Development Canada, StatCan. #89-550-MPE. O'Niell, T; Leo, G. (2002) "Divorced From Reality." Report / Alberta Edition 4/24/2000. Woodward, J (1997) "A Feminist Senator Who Fights for Fathers." Alberta Report 2/17/1997 24 (10). UNFPA Staff (1997) "A new Role For Men: Partners for Women's empowerment." Viewed online on 11/1105 at http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/479_filename_newroleformen.pdf Read More