Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 30, 1994 TAG: 9410120013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With more moms working, many in jobs that are more demanding and time-consuming than those of their spouses, more dads - many quite willingly - have become chief bottle-washer, diaper-changer, Band-aid dispenser, teller of bedtime stories and deliverer of children to and from day-care centers.
In divorce situations - though granted it's still usually the other way around - more dads are asking for and winning custody of the children. Some dads are even awarded alimony, and child-support payments. And, yes, this can lead to more deadbeat moms.
Virginia officials have hardly seen a huge swell in such cases. Which is, fair to say, a mixed blessing. However great the gains women have made in the working world, there are still many fewer women than men in higher-paying professional positions. Also, in most families, it's still mom - divorced or not, demanding outside job or not - who is expected to shoulder the vast majority of child-tending chores.
If women reneging on alimony and child-support payments to ex-spouses are still relatively rare, that's not to say, however, that all moms take seriously their financial responsibility to their children. Indeed, it's not that the number of deadbeat moms in Virginia isn't growing. It's just that they are less likely to be the product of equal employment opportunities and divorce courts than of the unwed teen-pregnancy phenomenon.
What Virginia officials say they're seeing is more unwed teen moms who don't go on welfare, who simply ``park'' their babies with their own parents, other relatives or temporarily willing takers, and go off to get on with their lives - with insufficient thought given to the baby left behind. The teen moms may finish high school, get jobs, move in with boyfriends (not necessarily the father of the abandoned baby), eventually marry and have other children.
Meanwhile, the surrogate mom-by-default - usually a grandmother - may have to apply for Aid to Families with Dependent Children to see to the needs, often including costly medical needs, of the child born out of wedlock. The state, in turn, is forced to legally go after the deadbeat mom to try to get reimbursement for the AFDC program.
Unwed teen mothers who have the wherewithal to financially support their babies, but refuse to do so, are only a small percentage of the total caseload of Virginia's Division of Child-Support Enforcement. Their ranks, though, are likely to increase as long as the unwed teen-pregnancy rate continues to climb.
Those attempting to address the teen-pregnancy problem, with all its troublesome psychological and socioeconomic fallout, already have identified scores of direct and indirect costs - from increased crime to growing health-care expenses - that the problem imposes on society. To these, now add the costs of tracking down those moms who would abandon their obligations along with their babies.
by CNB