Fair is Fair

by Katha Pollitt

Copyright Nation Magazine Company Jan 30, 1995

"You start out with the philosophy that you can have as many babies as you want...if you don't ask the government to take care of them. But when you start asking the government to take care of them, the government ought to have some control over you. I would say, for people like that, if they want the government to take care of their children I would be for something like Norplant, mandatory Norplant."

What well-known politician made the above remarks? Newt Gingrich? Jesse Helms? Dan Quayle? No, it was Marion Barry, newly installed Democratic Mayor of our nation's capital, speaking last November to Sally Quinn of The Washington Post

Isn't it interesting that the male politicians who go all out for family values--the deadbeat dads, multiple divorcers, convicted felons, gropers and philanderers who rule the land--always focus on women's behavior and always in a punitive way? You could, after all, see the plethora of women and children in poverty as the fruits of male fecklessness, callousness, selfishness and sexual vanity. We hear an awful lot about pregnant teens, but what about the fact that 30 percent of fathers of babies born to girls under 16 are men in their 20s or older? What about the fact that the condom is the only cheap, easy to use, effective, side-effectless nonprescription method of contraception--and it is the male partner who must choose to use it? What about the 50 percent of welfare mothers who are on the rolls because of divorce--i.e., the failure of judges to order, or husbands to pay, adequate child support?

Marion Barry's views on welfare are shared by millions: Women have babies by parthenogenesis or cloning, and then perversely demand that the government "take care of them." Last time I looked, taking care of children meant feeding, bathing and singing the Barney song, and mothers, not government bureaucrats, were performing those tasks. It is not the mother's care that welfare replaces but the father's cash. Newt Gingrich's Personal Responsibility Act is directed against unmarried moms, but these women are actually assuming a responsibility that their babies' fathers have shirked. It's all very well to talk about orphanages, but what would happen to children if mothers abandoned them at the rate fathers do? A woman who leaves her newborn in the hospital and never returns for it still makes headlines. You'd need a list as thick as the New York City phone book to name the men who have no idea where or how or who their children are.

My point is not to demonize men, but fair's fair. If we've come so far down the road that we're talking about mandatory Norplant; about starving women into giving up their kids to orphanages (Republican version) or forcing young mothers to live in group homes (Democratic version); if Charles Murray elicits barely a peep when he suggests releasing men from financial obligations to out-of-wedlock children and divorced moms have to hire private detectives to get their exes to pay court-awarded child support, it's time to insure that the Personal Responsibility Act applies equally to both sexes. For example:

1. A man who fathers a child out of wedlock must pay $10,000 a year or 20 percent of his income, whichever is greater, in child support until the child reaches 21. If he is unable to pay, the government will, in which case the father will be given a workfare (no wage) job and a dorm residence comparable to those provided homeless women and children--i.e., curfews, no visitors and compulsory group therapy sessions in which, along with other unwed fathers, he can learn to identify the patterns of irresponsibility that led him to impregnate a woman so thoughtlessly.

2. A man who fathers a second child out of wedlock must pay child support equal to that for the first; if he can't, or is already on workfare, he must have a vasectomy. A sample of his sperm will be preserved so he can father more children if he becomes able to support the ones he already has.

3. Married men who father children out of wedlock or in sequential marriages have the same obligations to all their children, whose living standards must be as close to equal as is humanly possible. This means that some older men will be financially unable to provide their much-younger trophy wives with the babies those women often crave. Too bad!

4. Given the important role played by fathers in everything from upping their children's test scores to teaching them the meaning of terms like "wide receiver" and "throw weight," divorced or unwed fathers will be legally compelled to spend time with their children or face criminal charges of child neglect. Absentee dads, not overburdened single moms, will be legally liable for the crimes and misdemeanors of their minor children, and their paychecks will be docked if the kids are truant.

5. In view of the fact that men can father children unknowingly, all men will pay a special annual tax to provide support for children whose paternity is unknown. Men wishing to avoid the tax can undergo a vasectomy at state expense, with sperm to be frozen at personal expense (Republican version) or by government subsidy (Democratic version).

As I was saying, fair's fair.