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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard

> From: Frank Zepezauer 
> >
> >You are correct about the children of two-parent households being much 
> >better off than children of single-mother households, but not about 
> >children of single-father households.

This isn't surpising considering what it takes for a father to get and 
keep the children.

> >Every bit of data collected to date reveals that children of 
> >single-father households are much better off than children of even 
> >two-parent households.  For example, 70-75% of prison inmates come from 
> >mother-headed households, even though mother-headed households 
> >constituted only 18% of all households when these inmates were growing 
> >up.  Contrast this to 1% of inmates from single-father households, and 
> >24-29% from two-parent households.

It's actually a function of natural selection in reverse.


Any woman with working overies can get pregnant.  She doesn't have to be 
married, she doesn't have to "qualify" for fertility, and there is no 
legal means of preventing her from concieving forcing her to abort, or 
forcing her to give up the child.

A marriage license is easy to get.  Any couple where each partner is a 
member of the opposite sex can get married.  No one tells anyone what 
their rights and responsibilities are (they'd be different in 3 months 
anyway).

In a two parent home, SOMEBODY has to work.  Social Services takes a very 
dim view of couples who are married with children.  If BOTH of them are 
deadbeats, they assume it's time to get rid of the father. (Like deciding 
the cure for nearsitedness is to remove one eye).

When a father gets to keep his kids, it's generally because mom couldn't 
make to the hearing because she's in prison in another state AND Father 
O'Mally, Father Duarte, Father D'Angelo AND the Reverend Jerry Falwell 
testified that he was the lost 14th apostle.

The qualifications to be a live-in boyfriend?  You have to go down for at 
least 40 minutes.  If you can keep her screaming for 2 hours, and can be 
home by 3:00 PM every afternoon, you can be a Stepfather.

Want to see child-abuse by Stepfathers go down?  Tell them they will have 
to pick up 50% of the child-support tab!  Want to see really great 
fathers back in the home raising kids again - give him a 50% reduction if 
he marries a woman with chilren.

Want to see a radical reduction in the divorce rate and a radical increase in
the number of 2 parent families.  Limit the child-support OBLIGATION to 3
years and make everything after that a voluntary gift (tax deductuble and not
subject to court order).  Mom would be remarried in a shot, and BEGGING the
father to come and visit the kids at LEAST once/week.  The FATHER could 
afford to get married to a woman with children.

Another alternative is to release the father from support obligations 1 
year after he gets an irreversable vasectomy.  That means he would ONLY 
be able to commit to the Stepchildren or his natural children.  At the 
very least, you would have 5 million men who couldn't "go forth and 
multiply" after losing their first family.

Once upon a time, Marriage was a Life-or-Death commitment.  About the 
ONLY way out of the marriage was to kill the other partner (leaving you 
in jail for life).  Today, marriage requires about as much commitment 
from the mother as a used-car loan.  If they don't like the car, they 
just stop making payments and let the repo-man get the car.  If she don't 
like the man, she just stops giving him the love and affection and let 
him walk-out.  Just as there is a risk of consequences  to the repo-man 
(damaged credit, liability for excess wear-and-tear...) there may be a 
few consequences of "cuttin' him off" (beatings, abuse, violence against 
the children...).   Some dealers will give you a "clean slate" if you 
just drive the car back to the lot.  Some men will give you a "nice 
divorce" if you treat him just nice enough to make him willing to get the 
divorce.

I was such a hard case, my wife actually had to put a bee in the bed (I'm 
systemic - if the be had stung a vein, it would have gone to my heart and 
killed me - fortunately it got me in a fatty area and only left me with a 
six inch "bubble" on my stomach).

	Rex


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Sat Feb 24 00:09:18 1996