Interview with President Barack Obama – on Responsible Fatherhood

Interview with President Barack Obama

Then Senator Barack Obama appeared as a guest on the Jeffery Leving Fathers’ Rights Legal Show on SOUL 106.3 FM – Chicago/Indiana.  Here is a transcript of the interview where they discuss the importance of responsible fatherhood:

Jeffery M. Leving: Senator Barack Obama

President Obama: Yes, sir!

JML: How are you doing? It’s an honor to talk to you. I actually met you at an NAACP event Vera Davis put on in Chicago years ago.

President Obama: Well it’s wonderful to talk to you again.

JML: This is Jeffery Leving with the Jeffery Leving Fathers’ Rights Legal Show today. And today we are honored to have as our guest Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama.

Senator, I was reading your website, BarackObama.com/family and I was reading about Strengthening Fatherhood and Families and in your website, you talk about fatherless children and how they are more likely to end up in poverty and drop out of school and I also read your Responsible Fatherhood & Healthy Families Act.

And I think that’s tremendous and it can help a lot of children and families. What motivated you to re-introduce the Responsible Fatherhood & Healthy Families Act?

President Obama: Well, Jeffery as you know my father left me when I was 2. I remember watching my mom struggle as a single parent, trying to go to school and work and raise 2 kids at the same time – and fortunately she has support from my grandparents but a lot of single moms don’t have that.

And unfortunately although many of them do heroic jobs – it is true that statistically; children without fathers involved their lives are more likely to experience poverty, more likely their girls to get pregnant as teenagers, they’re more likely to have problems at school and so I really believe that it’s important for us in all communities but especially the African American Community – which has seen such as problem with lack of men and male involvement in family life that we really put an emphasize on this.

And this is something that the government can help to make sure that we don’t have a dis-incentive for fathers to be involved; make sure that our welfare programs for example are designed in such a way that they don’t penalize fathers participating.

I think we got to do a real good job trying to reintroduce males who’ve been involved in the criminal justice system as ex-offenders – giving them the opportunity so that they are able to support their families, find work, get on the right path – but ultimately there’s a lot of personal responsibility that’s involved in this. And one of the things I want to do as president is to use the bully pulpit to say to men, “You’ve to get involved in your child’s life. It will make a difference not only in their lives but in yours.”

JML: I agree with you 100%. We need to support and involve fatherhood. I also believe, to do this, we have to change the way the world views dads – and fathers are an untapped resource and I believe by involving fathers in positive relationships with their children, that will reduce youth violence which is affecting our country terribly, especially in Chicago where we’re from.

So we need to do this and justice shouldn’t be a luxury and many fathers don’t have the resources to seek legal counsel, to involve themselves in their children’s lives and they don’t have even basic knowledge – so your bill is excellent.

I’m a big supporter of it because I think the bill will help many many children throughout our country – because millions of children are father-absent in the United States and because of that, they are living in poverty and they can escape poverty by this bill coming law.

How do we keep crime down in the United States? We know that involving fathers and positive relationships with their children is one solution. But what are other solutions to keeping crime down and fighting youth violence?

We also have to have after school and summer school to give positive alternatives to our youth. And if we invest in early childhood education, studies show that every dollar we invest there we see improvements in reading scores reduced dropout rates, and reduced delinquencies. So giving young people positive things to do and investing in more police on the street the better off we are going to be.

Alright Jeffery, thank you so much for having me.

JML: Thank you for being on my show, I appreciate your time.

President Obama: Thank you so much – take care.

To listen to the archived interview, please visit: www.DadsRights.com

Respect a Man’s Choice, Too

By Jeffery M. Leving & Glenn Sacks

In Kai Ma’s recent AlterNet column “The Difference Between a Womb and a Wallet” (7/26/06) she applauds a U.S. District Court judge’s quick, contemptuous dismissal of Matt Dubay’s “Roe v. Wade for Men” lawsuit. Dubay sought to wipe out the child support payments he is obligated to make to an ex-girlfriend who, he says, used a fallacious claim of infertility to deceive him into getting her pregnant.

In opposing “Choice for Men,” Ma asserts that a “woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy is not the equivalent of a man’s choice to financially opt out of fatherhood.” She cites the pain and discomfort of pregnancy, and the way motherhood “may limit our mobility or careers.”   These problems are very real; however, so are the problems created when men are saddled with child support obligations.

According to an estimate in Men’s Health magazine, 100,000 men each year are jailed for alleged nonpayment of child support. Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data reveal that 70% of those behind on payments earn poverty level wages. The “Most Wanted Deadbeat Dad” lists put out by most states are used both for police actions and to hunt and shame “deadbeats” through newspaper ads and publicity campaigns. These lists are largely comprised of uneducated African-American and Latino men with occupation descriptions like “laborer,” “maintenance man” and “roofer.”

Ma dismisses the burden of child support as being “a few hundred dollars a month.” However, in California, AlterNet’s home state, a noncustodial father of two earning a modest $3,800 a month in net income pays $1,300 a month in child support. The money–almost $300,000 over 18 years–is tax-free to the custodial mother. One can reasonably debate whether this sum is appropriate or excessive. One cannot reasonably dismiss it as being insignificant.

Ma portrays children as a mother’s albatross, forgetting that parenting is also the greatest joy a person can experience in life. Yes, in single mother homes the mother bears the burden of most of the childrearing, but the mothers also experience the lion’s share of the joys and benefits of having children. Noncustodial fathers are not so fortunate—they’re usually permitted only a few days a month to spend with their kids. Once mom finds a new man, they’re often pushed out entirely in favor of the child’s “new dad.”

Ma condemns men who “lie, deceive, break their promises, or pull a 180…who agree to marry but don’t,” and laments that “millions of women” have been “trapped into single motherhood for life with, often, next to no recourse.” Yet according to a randomized study of 46,000 divorce cases published in the American Law and Economics Review, two‑thirds of all divorces involving couples with children are initiated by mothers, not fathers, and in only 6% of cases did the women claim to be divorcing cruel or abusive husbands.

The out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States hovers around 33%–given the wide variety of contraceptive and reproductive choices women enjoy, this can hardly be blamed primarily on men. Yes, in some of these cases the mother and father shared a relationship which the mother (and the father) may have expected would become a marriage. Yet these relationships fail for many reasons besides male perfidy. These include: youth; economic pressure and the lack of living wage jobs (how many couples fight over money?); and the mothers’ post-partum depression and mood-swings. It’s doubtful that many men really wake up in the morning and say to themselves “my child loves me and needs me, my girlfriend loves me and needs me—I’m outta here.”

Ma says men “shouldn’t be able to choose to abandon that child in the lurch.” Yet 1.5 million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year through adoption, abortion or abandonment. In over 40 states mothers can completely opt out of motherhood by returning unwanted babies to the hospital shortly after birth. If men like Dubay are deadbeats and deserters, what are these women?

Whenever a child is born outside of the context of a loving, two-parent family, there are no good solutions. Ma overstates her case, but she is correct that “Choice for Men” is a flawed solution. However, the current regime, which provides women with a variety of choices and men with none, is also flawed.

Dubay’s conduct is not particularly admirable, and he’s certainly not a candidate for father of the year; however, he does have a point. Over the past four decades women’s advocates have successfully made the case that it is wrong to force a pregnancy on an unwilling mother. Despite the backlash against Dubay, hopefully his lawsuit will result in a greater societal awareness that it is also wrong to force a pregnancy on an unwilling father.

Jeffery M. Leving is the Chairman of the Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood. He is the author of the book Fathers’ Rights: Hard-hitting and Fair Advice for Every Father Involved in a Custody Dispute. His website is www.dadsrights.com.

Glenn Sacks’ columns on men’s and fathers’ issues have appeared in dozens of America’s largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.