Posted on 27. Sep, 2004 by Brian Reid in General
Those looking to fatherhood as a political cause have never had much to get worked up about. So I was intrigued when my usually content-free weekly e-mail came from fathers.com on Friday. In this edition, Ken Canfield, the head of the National Center for Fathering, encouraged me to support the “Bayh-Santorum fatherhood bill, which provides critical resources to states for training and promoting responsible fatherhood.”
Fair enough a goal, I suppose. But the next part was really interesting: “Ironically, the Children’s Defense Fund is emphatically opposing any fatherhood legislation …” I thought that was weird. Why wouldn’t CDF be happy about “responsible fatherhood?” So I checked around, as best I could. I’m in over my head here; react accordingly.
I think Canfield is talking about S. 2830, which is being pushed by Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum. That fatherhood bill has a lot more to say about marriage than dads (it’s titled the “Healthy Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood Act of 2004″). The bill talks money, but only in reference to marriage. And when the text does get around to fatherhood programs, the main strategy to improving fatherhood is … marriage.
Now, there’s lots of text in there about how important dads are, and how important stability is and how bad domestic violence can be. But the reason (I suspect) that the Children’s Defense Fund is opposed to this is the same reason that women’s groups have been leery of “marriage promotion” for years (see this old-but-still-applicable treatment for more detail than you can shake a stick at): namely, incentivizing marriage isn’t always a good thing. Marriage makes it harder for women and children to escape a violent or unhealthy household. That’s not to say that marriage isn’t a good idea, but government is playing a dangerous game in trying to make bad relationships into good marriages.
The spending on “parenthood promotion” — highlighting parenting education, the importance of child support, mentoring — makes more sense, but that’s clearly not the thrust of the bill. Nor is it terribly clear how the government can get the word out about “good parenting practices” to fathers. We’re talking $100 million in programs, when there’s basically no track record of success.
I know there are a great many similar policy battles on this subject swirling about at present, and I haven’t been following them, so the well-educated are welcome to use the comments space to set me straight.
For a more moderate last word, let me flag this bit from Jason DeParle’s thoughtful NYT Magazine story:
The truth is that no one really knows how to help poor men become better fathers and husbands. The debate is in its embryonic stage, as the debate about poor women was 20 years ago. It took a succession of efforts, most of them failures, before welfare-to-work programs started to work. Why not let 1,000 flowers bloom, or at least a good half-dozen, and rigorously test them — marriage versus Marriage Plus, counseling versus training?
amy
28. Sep, 2004
Oh, lordy. You may as well link to the bill text, rD, so people can see it without futzing w/thomas.
Yeah, the objections are going to be mainly the “you’re trying to trap women in terrible marriages with abusive husbands” ones, and I think there’s fair validity to them. Mothers have enough trouble getting out of these situations without a budget line shoving them back in. The domestic-abuse partnerships look strictly cosmetic; there’s no money there for home visitors, etc., to see that the homilies handed out in required classes have taken. My guess is this is just one end of a two-prong “keep ‘em married” program, the other of which is an attempt to kill off no-fault divorce. And all this is characteristic of the religious right, I think. Yes, under many, possibly most, circumstances, a two-parent home is best. But when it’s not, it’s not, and these guys don’t want to know about it.
hang on -
amy
28. Sep, 2004
The other problem is the return of the word “illegitimacy”. They may as well be throwing “miscegenation” and “high yaller bastard child” in for good measure.
Which reminds me, what’s this business with no money for lobbyists? Back to THOMAS for a mo: OK, it’s not been debated yet. When it is, let’s find out what the real story is on that. My guess is the idea is to keep money away from the domestic-abuse-victims advocates, but we’ll see.
Rebel Dad
28. Sep, 2004
Props to anyone who can get a Thomas permalink. Any wonks out there? -rD
amy
28. Sep, 2004
oh. oh. OK, so I looked all through the bill text, looking for the faith-based bit to show up…and saw not much. But there’s some rather specific stuff about who’s supposed to be hired to publicize these programs (and consequently the advertiser’s own agenda), and I wonder who the admin has in mind. My guess is it’s either a fathers’-rights group — the ones that have been sounding virulent lately about custody — and/or various churches/denominations. They’re also directed to buy airtime & print ads, so that means money going to right-wing and religious media.
Looks like there’s $5 million budgeted for that.
amy
28. Sep, 2004
Whoops. Make that $5M in each FY 05 and FY 06.
amy
28. Sep, 2004
rD, I don’t know how perma this will be, since it’s a cgi query:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.2830.PCS:
what problems do you get with that?
greg from daddytypes
28. Sep, 2004
I thought deParle talked about these funds being a redirection of funds from other jobs, counselling, and WIC/welfare-related programs, and that existing recipient organizations (who didn’t get on the marriage bandwagon) would get defunded in favor of new faith-based ones.
Elizabeth
28. Sep, 2004
Ok, a little bit of background. The marriage and fatherhood proposals have been floating around for several years, as part of the overall welfare (TANF) reauthorization bill. This bill has been going nowhere, both because of big difference between the House and Senate bills, and because it’s caught in the overall legislative stalemate in the Senate. Since the welfare bill expired in 2002, it’s been extended in 3 or 6 month segments. So, Santorum and Bayh are trying to get just the marriage and fatherhood parts of the bill passed, by attaching them to the latest 6 month extension, which must be enacted by Thursday or $16 billion of welfare money stops flowing to the states. The Democrats will fight like crazy to block it unless the child care funding increase they want is also attached. So, I’d bet this is going nowhere.
Rebel Dad
28. Sep, 2004
I knew there was a wonk out there! Thanks, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth
28. Sep, 2004
The money for these programs would come from cutting funds from two bonuses that are currently in the welfare law. The first is a “High Performance Bonus” that rewards states that gets a lot of people jobs, makes sure they get food stamps, Medicaid, etc. The second is a bonus to states that have the biggest drop in their out-of-wedlock birth rates without increasing their abortion rate. Almost no one thinks this second bonus is anything but a lottery for states, so the fatherhood/ marriage programs are probably a better use of the funds. States would also be allowed to use their TANF block grants to match the marriage money, which means that the money could come out of cash benefits, job training, etc. States are already allowed to spend TANF money to promote marriage and fatherhood, but most of them haven’t chosen to.
amy
29. Sep, 2004
Not for lack of trying, though. Iowa Republicans have been trying to hang more strings on marriage for the last few years — mandatory counseling, wait periods before divorce, abolition of no-fault, default joint legal custody. The only reason most of this stuff isn’t passing is Tom Vilsack’s veto, and Vilsack had been expected to lose in the last election. He remains only because the GOP primary winner was — no other way to put it — mean and nasty, and that goes over very poorly here.
Thanks for the background on the bill, btw. Any idea which GOP senators are on the no side?
Elizabeth
29. Sep, 2004
Well, the Santorum/Bayh bill is dead, at least for now. Congress is expected to pass a clean extension of the welfare law for another 6 months later today.
I don’t know of any Republicans who have been actively opposing the marriage/fatherhood proposals. But Snowe has been out front fighting for more money for child care and to allow college to count as a “work activity” for welfare recipients. As long as the Rs only have a 1 seat majority in the Finance committee, she essentially has veto power over the bill…
s
05. Nov, 2004
BPO
Todd
15. Dec, 2006
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