The Child Comes First, Not the Parent

Public officials are taken to task in the fifth annual California Children’s Budget 1997-98, released in June, for quietly cutting children’s programs from 1989 to the present fiscal year. But public budgets do not tell the whole story. At least as important are the decisions of private individuals and their commitment to children.

Here is what one child advocate has learned: Nothing else matters unless people who have no business having children stop doing it. I am not suggesting abortion; if we are mature, that choice need not arise. But short of that, I am tired of arguing over the mechanics. Let’s go back to what apparently is a revolutionary principle for Generation X and its parents: The child comes first, not you.

At the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy: Wait; get married; save; make a commitment. That’s not asking too much. But most of our children are not even born intentionally. We live in a culture whose most popular television show (“Seinfeld”) portrays nebbish friend George, upon learning that he may have impregnated a woman, reacting in delight: “Hey, my boys can swim!”

Now, I am not Dan Quayle, and I understand that George is not a real person. But if I’m forced to choose between Quayle’s message to Murphy Brown and Murphy’s liberal retort about insulting single moms and all the rest of the claptrap, I’ll swallow hard, check my spelling, and choose Dan’s camp.

The facts are in. In the census figures published in 1992, the median income of single mothers with children was in the $7,000 to $11,000 range. The median income of married couples with children was more than four times this range--more than $40,000. This extraordinary disparity holds true for all ethnic groups. Single parenthood is not economic, especially in a mobile, high-rent state like California. It generally means poverty. And it is not charming barefoot boy in the street rolling a hoop poverty. It is watch parent buzz around on cocaine or meth poverty. It is eat-dog-food poverty. For too many, it is child-prostitution-poverty.

Where are the fathers? If one is to lay blame, my sex gets three-fourths of it. Of the 2.4 million absent California biological dads traced by family support agencies, the amount paid per month per child to their 4.5 million children averages $16.80. Read that number again.

The California Children’s Budget 1997-98 counts births of married women and the percentage of absent dads who pay any child support for their issue. The number was at 90.7% in 1990; now it’s at 79.4%.

Although some liberals have long sought to exempt the poor from the obligations all of us should have to our children, most Americans have temporarily swerved to the opposite extreme and are now so angry that they are eager for class warfare.

Most liberals, bless their hearts, want to argue the facts--that teen pregnancies are not that high; that only 2% of welfare moms are unwed teens (granted); that the poor work hard when given a chance (true); or that corporate welfare overwhelms public aid to families (even more true). But the fact is, unwed births and child support are problems, and the poor are not exempt from their obligations to their progeny.

If we targeted selfish adults, we wouldn’t have the pogrom our impoverished children now face. And that is what they now confront. Almost 700,000 welfare parents must find jobs within the next two years. The optimistic estimate projects 380,000 new jobs in 1999 and 300,000 in 1999. And our welfare parents are not searching in a vacuum; they must compete with 1.6 million others, including high school and college graduates.

The jobs are not there for more than 10% to 20% of welfare parents. In this game of musical chairs, more than 1 million children will be left standing in the streets. A family of mom and two kids must survive on less than $500 per month (including food stamps); for many it will be less than $200 per month. Try paying for rent, utilities and food with that.

Instead of taking on the adults who have created the problem, we have now decided on the disincentive: the deprivation of necessities for more than a million children. This problem would not exist with an ethic that children come first. Even the most hardhearted would have trouble denying help to people who tried, but suffered misfortune, layoff, disease, divorce or accident. It is hard to know whom to blame, the liberals who are in terminal denial or the conservatives who lack the courage to face what they really object to--irresponsible reproduction decisions by adults, preferring instead to pick on politically weak children.