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Your comments on the following would be appreciated:


Questions and answers about "Father Placement":

Q - Is it proposed that the mother be required/mandated to participate in
an interview regarding placement of children with their biological
relatives, with those relatives present? 

A - Her choice.  If she is interested in the welfare of the children there
is no need to mandate her appearance.  But she must be advised of this
interview.  Excluding either parent, as fathers are currently excluded, is
not helpful to the children, to th e mother, to the father, or to the
taxpayer. 

Q - If so, would this not take a change in state law and perhaps even
federal law? 

Possibly not.  This is currently being evaluated. 

Q - Who is to enforce this requirement, and what are the consequences to
the mother and children for failure to cooperate? 

If the father or another biological relative is willing, able, and capable
of taking care of their own children or grandchildren, and if this removes
the stigma of welfare from the children, and if this enables the mother to
pursue an education and a care er, and if this saves US taxpayers $200
Billion per year, then what "enforcement" is required?  All that is needed
is for the government to end the practice of divorcing children from their
fathers.  No children are going to be carried kicking and screami ng from
their mothers' arms. 

Q - Is not the requirement that children participate breaking new ground
with regard to children having to participate in the welfare application
process?  Will this not be of major concern to child advocates?  Will
children feel harassed, scared, be miss ing school to subject themselves
to this? 

A - This is ground that should have been broken 3 decades ago.  Child
advocates cannot deny the desirability of getting fathers back into their
children's lives.  The recent "Focus on Fathers Summit" in Burbank and the
"Family Conference" in Anaheim spons ored by Governor Wilson established
the desirability of returning fathers to their children's lives.  This has
become a national priority which no "child advocate" can deny.  David
Blankenhorn says "In order to assure that every child has a father
present, we are going to have to take care of our own children, PLUS one
more".  Missing from school, scared, or harassed when presented with the
opportunity to gain a father?  Even in the rare event that a child has to
miss school it is well worth getting fathers back into their children's
lives. Not involving the father nor the children in this expensive and
profound process is
 just wrong.

Q - What controls will there be put in place to assure that the Father
Placement Council: 

1) Does not violate the mother's/child's constitutional rights to due
process? 

A - The same controls that are in place now to protect the father's
constitutional rights. 

2) Has staff performing this function who are properly trained,
sensitive,and have undergone a criminal record check? 

A - Clearly those functions can be performed adequately today.  The
fathers who have committed to maintaining integrity in this process are
honest, sincere, and dedicated and have no political issues to dilute
their goals. 

Q - What evidence is there that removing the children from the custody of
their mother (who is applying for welfare) and placing them instead with
the father or paternal grandfather is not simply substituting the
sociological impact of one parent being ab sent from the family for that
of another parent now being missing? 

A - It can't get worse.  All of the evidence is that it will get much
better.  Fatherlessness is clearly the underpinning of our social
pathology.  [ref: THE GARBAGE GENERATION by Dr. Daniel Amneus, and THE
MYTH OF MALE POWER by Dr. Warren Farrell].  But primarily most estimates
are that both divorce and illegitimacy could decline by as much as 90%,
which would both reduce the number of single-parent families and increase
the number of two-parent families.  It almost doubles the number of
parents involved
 in parenting.  This is the heart of the solution.

Q - Is single father involvement any better for the child than single
mother involvement? A - Because there are so few single-father families
the data is scarce.  But what is common knowledge is that they are better
environments than single-mother families, especially if the choice is
between single-mother families living under the stigma of w elfare or
single-father families which are self-supporting. 

Q - What is the legal authority for the welfare department or the Father
Placement Council to remove children from the custody of the mother and
place them with a father or grandfather? 

A - The US Constitution does not give the courts authority to divorce
children from their father's.  The highest authority granted by the
Constitution regarding the care of children rests with the father, and not
with the legislature nor with the courts. 
 The Bible specifically gives the father both authority and responsibility
for his children.  The use of this unconstitutional and secular power by
the legislature and by the courts has not benefitted children, fathers,
savings accounts, the economy, soci al stability, nor even mothers. 

Q - Does this not require court intervention and decisions? 

A - No. 

Q - Hasn't the family law court in many of these cases decided the issue
of child placement, and isn't the court itself the only source of legal
action to change the placement? 

The court has superceded the authority granted it and violated Biblical,
constitutional, and common law principles by: 1) awarding custody only to
mothers who cannot afford to raise them, burdening taxpayers with a huge
and unnecessary cost, while 2) not involving their biological fathers who
can provide better and safer and more economically secure environments and
save the taxpayers billions of dollars. 

Q - If so who is going to petition the court,and who will pay those legal
costs (including the legal cost of the mother who, in many cases, will
want to fight the petition in the court setting)? 

A - "Equality in parenting" can be achieved without the involvement of the
court nor the legislature nor any additional legal expenses. 

Q - Who will determine the appropriateness of the father to have custody
(i.e., a father with a violent and/or serious criminal record may be a
much worse choice for placement than allowing the children to remain with
mother, even if welfare is the primar y source of economic resources)? 

A - The father.  If not, the paternal grandfather.  Next, the maternal
grandfather.  Next, uncles.  The US Office of Technology Assessment
commissioned Howard Dubowitz through a health program to evaluate child
abuse, and his report dated May 1987 entitle d "Child Maltreatment in the
US" points out that:
	Child abuse and neglect in the 8 years from 1976 to 1984 increased
158%.  [This parallelled the increase in mother-headed households and the
corresponding decrease in Father-headed households indicating problems
stemming from Father-absence].  The study concluded that 2.3% of sexual
abuse of girls was by biological Fathers versus 17% by step-Fathers. 
[This suggests that girls in the custody of their divorced mothers who
remarried were 7.4 times more likely to be sexually abused as those who
remain in Fa ther-headed households].  It reported that 37% of child
maltreatment occurred in mother-headed households versus 23% in all US
Families.  It reported that 44,700 children were sexually abused in 1979
which was 0.07% of all children below the age of 18 yea rs.  [This is one
out of 62,112 children sexually abused by biological fathers and one out
of 8,403 by stepfathers]. 

In other words, even with such convincing evidence from
federally-sponsored studies, courts continue to remove children from
secure and financially sound environments and place them in riskier and
financially unsound environments.  It is not likely that r eversing this
trend will do more harm to children, and the preponderence of evidence is
that it will reverse the growth of our social pathology. 

Q - The family law court presently makes these often heart wrenching
decisions:  is it proposed that for welfare applicants this ominous
authority be turned over to some bureaucrat or to the Father Placement
Council? 

A - No.  This must be a "FAMILY DECISION" involving all concerned members
of the children's biological family and not one made in a vacuum in
sterile court rooms by third party bureaucrats with no vested interest in
the children's future welfare. 

Q - Is this about what is best for the children or what is best for their
fathers? 

A - Yes. 

Q - What do we do with the mother with multiple kids from multiple
fathers, with marriage not having occurred in some or perhaps all of these
births?  Do we split up the kids among the several fathers, thereby
breaking up the family of stepbrothers and st epsisters?  is this better
for the kids than keeping them together with mom? 

Imagine if you yourself, the son or daughter of a welfare mom, is given
the opportunity to live with his biological father, at least 50% of whom
are living above the poverty line and thus are self-supporting.  The
answer would be a very clear "yes" for a large majority of children.  This
does not mean that they don't get to visit their stepbrothers and
stepsisters.  Fathers do not need to use children as hostages to gain
favors or to get money from mothers as mothers currently do.  The children
and the fa thers would not have to hide from fraud investigators as the
children and the mothers currently do. 

Q - Is the intent that this proposal applies only to welfare applicants
who were at one time married?  What about the burgeoning population of
moms who were never married to the father? 

A - There is no greater dishonor the state could force onto a child's life
than to fail to take every action to identify his biological father and to
avoid a childhood of fatherlessness.  By all means we will work diligently
to care for the children of th is burgeoning population of moms as well as
to inhibit its growth. 

regards,



fathers

From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Mon Jul 17 22:49:37 1995
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