"Deadbeat Dads." Ever wonder where that term came from? Did you realize it had nothing to do with divorce and child support payments originally?
Back in the early 70s in the US, divorce laws were relaxed and at about the same time, welfare services began to increase and expand. Custody and child support weren't the issues they are today; most divorcing couples made their arrangements without any outside intervention.
In the true spirit of 'women's lib', women understood that if they were the one to file for divorce, and wanted to take the kids with them, then they would also be expected to take responsibility for the financial support of the children. They understood that their husbands could not, in most cases, maintain two households.
Women of that era were often unskilled and untrained - not suitable for any kind of job, so it wasn't unusual for these women to go on welfare. In addition to food stamps and a housing allowance, there was also medical coverage and special training programs if they wanted to eventually take a job. These things were not available to non-welfare recipients.
Dad helped out financially when he could. He usually lived nearby or sometimes even in the same house. However, when it came to the state welfare agency, Mom claimed she had no idea where he was. It wasn't like they'd make any effort to track him down, because after all she was a liberated woman and had made her own life choices. The children were her responsibility and she was doing the best she could to provide for them by accepting welfare.
However in the late 70s-early 80s, an economic recession hit the US. In Detroit, where I lived at the time, and other Eastern/Midwest cities, it was closer to being a depression, with unemployment in the double digits.
Welfare agencies in all states were hit hard by all these new people added to their rolls. Because the near-failure of the auto industry was a good part of the recession, with plants closing and layoffs everywhere, there were a lot of people who didn't find work again for years. These people had worked in auto manufacturing their entire lives and had no other skills, and it takes a long time to re-train for something else.
Meanwhile the taxpayers were screaming. They were sick of supporting all these families, and the public was beginning to realize there were also families who had been on welfare for generations, ever since these programs were started. Kids grew up never knowing anyone who'd had a paying job, and had no idea how to manage a life with a job. Even though there were job training programs, and other means of learning a trade, these programs neglected to teach the basic skills these kids needed - that showing up every single day on time was important, when the boss told you to do something that was what you did - those sorts of things.
The kids were unemployable, and were a significant percentage of the number of people on welfare. One day circa 1981, I was having coffee with two of my neighbor ladies, and we realized that out of all the households on our city street, in the half mile or so that was our neighborhood, we were the only ones who had anyone in the household working fulltime and not on some sort of welfare. There was now an entire sub-culture of people who had never known the concept of working for a living. The state agencies had to do something.
It took longer to change the laws defining welfare programs than their policies, so in a boardroom somewhere, it was decided they'd implement a new policy. This policy would give the public the impression these agencies had a serious interest in change for the good of the community.
They decided to go after those ex-husbands of all those women who took welfare rather than work, and the fathers of many thousands of illegitimate children as well, and make them pay back the money the state had given their families over the years. Of course the PR department got involved, to make the state look as good as possible. So they came up with a nifty little catchphrase everyone would remember, and shift the blame for their bloated, incompetent services somewhere else. "Deadbeat Dads." It was one of those phrases that spoke volumes in a couple of words. It had kind of a ring to it, and besides, it would work well in rap music, too. (Well, I'm not positive this is exactly the way it went down, but I know I'm close.)
So government employees everywhere began using the term. The national media picked up on it, and before long it was firmly implanted in the public consciousness. Never mind that it didn't mean anything, and didn't have any basis in reality. Like the term "family values," which is also meaningless, also created by somebody's PR department, it came to mean something anyway. . .and thus the myth of the deadbeat dad was born.
Originally created to obscure the facts,
it continues to do so, yet in a different context. I wonder if those
PR people knew the harm they would ultimately cause, and if they knew,
would they care?
Trudy W. Schuett
