When I walked out of the doors of the Supreme Court system on July 9, 2008, I was relieved. I was no longer married, but my troubles were just beginning. I still had issues with my ex-wife, but I began to think things through. I started to reflect upon the reasons why I was dragged through such a horrific court system. How could this happen to someone like me? I wondered where family court originated, how long it had been in existence, and what were the origins? Why did so many people assume that a father should leave the marital household, and the mother should receive child support as well as alimony and spousal support?

I did some digging around and finally found some information. I learned through my research that family court and child support was a relatively new phenomenon. I also asked a few of my elders, and I discovered the way their communities took care of children born out of wedlock without the federal or state government being involved.

Many people assume that child support and the family court system has always been a fact of life. It hasn’t. It started on January 4, 1975 when President Gerald Ford signed into law the Social Security Amendment of 1974. This law created a state-federal child support enforcement program under a new part D of Title IV of the Social Security Act.

In the mid 1970’s, no-fault divorce was on the rise. Section IV-D of the Social Security act attempted to replicate what a typical household would look like prior to a separation with regard to a child’s well being. It was essentially a monetary replacement for fathers. President Ford was apprehensive about some of the language in the act, and soon realized it was a law diametrically opposed to the values of conservatives. To him, and many who identified as conservative, it was yet another level of government growing larger, and soon to balloon out of control. This act allowed many levels of government to intrude into the private lives of the citizens of our country.

A few months after President ford signed this act, he wrote:

“I HAVE approved H.R. 7710, a bill which would make a desirable change in the tariff schedules affecting watches and watch movements manufactured in U.S. insular possessions. It would also amend the new child support program which became law last January as part of the Social Security Act.”

“The child support amendments, which were added to this bill shortly before the Congress recessed, will provide some States needed time to change their laws to comply with the new program, which became effective on August 1, 1975.”

……….

“When I approved the legislation establishing the new child support program last January, I expressed my strong backing of its objectives. I reaffirm that support now. However, at that time I also stated that some of the program’s provisions inject the Federal Government too deeply into domestic relations and that others raise serious privacy and administrative issues. I pointed specifically to the provisions for use of the Federal courts and the tax collection procedures of the Internal Revenue Service for the collection of child support, the provisions imposing excessive audit requirements on the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the provisions establishing a parent locator service-with access to all Federal records.”

“I urge the Congress to enact such legislation as soon as possible after the current recess, so the desirable objectives of the child support program are not undermined by undue intrusion of the Federal Government into people’s personal lives.”

 

It never happened. In fact, the size of this program increased tenfold from 1978 to 1998 and it hasn’t gotten any better.

What government attempted to do was to continue to use resources from fathers and force them to provide income to mothers. The system was set up in a way to try to make the family complete, even without the father present. It was built on a wobbly foundation and has proven to be a colossal failure. The state child support enforcement programs set up in the wake of this act have only grown in proportion and made things worse.

During the years after the passage of this act, one of the single greatest predictors that a family would fall into poverty was divorce. Non-marital child rearing was rare prior to no-fault divorce in the 1970’s. The majority of women, when they became mothers, were still the primary caretakers of children during this time – they weren’t the primary breadwinners. When women became divorced or separated, single mothers weren’t likely to work, which meant putting them on the welfare rolls; this increased the burden of the state to take care of families torn apart. Due to these and other factors, families were swept into the labyrinth of punitive child support orders. Family courts grew in size and scope. In the early 1980’s, due to the implementation of new state child support enforcement agencies, families became fragmented and alienated due to increasingly burdensome child support obligations.

The federal Bradley Amendment of 1986 was yet another example of overreach and had long lasting implications for families all across America. This amendment of Title IV-D mandated that a child-support debt can’t be retroactively reduced or forgiven even if the debtor is unemployed, suffers a pay cut, hospitalized, sent to prison or war. It’s a horrific amendment that has been one of the drivers of fatherlessness in many communities.

This is just the beginning of the numerous expansion of Title IV-D, state child support enforcement agencies and family courts. I’d write more about it, but I’ll do more pieces on this subject in the future.

I learned these kinds of things just don’t happen overnight. If you do your own research you’ll find out that the child support industry, welfare, and the slow and steady creep of government into our personal lives happens over a long period of time. When I read about new state or federal programs being proposed, I think back to how other agencies and departments began and how they rarely, if ever shrink in size.

Do we want more government in our lives or can we figure out how to function with less of it?

 

 

Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit broadway and off-broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.

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