Crimes Against Children, Not Parents

Recently I was harangued on Facebook about the utter injustice of a man sent to prison for overpaying his child support.  Incredulous I couldn’t believe that a father could be sent to prison for overpaying child-support.

However as you notice in the video that’s what happened except that isn’t what happened what really happened was the gentleman was late with child-support payments.  This of course is a crime in the State of Texas.  This gentleman is now paying a criminal penalty - he is serving time in prison not because he overpaid child support, but because he was late with the original payments.

For some reason local news stations seem to believe that it was a good story to focus on the gentleman's suffering for being sentenced to prison.  My question is where is the focus on the child when they needed assistance the previous several months and why are we concerned about a father who is responsibility to his children seems to be only when it’s convenient?

I get that the child support may have been paid up to the point, but the issue raised was that black men were being unfairly targeted.  This same race baiting discussion is part of the same one that has men thinking it is okay to father a child and then have no responsibility thereto.  That is a not a race based issue, but one of responsibility that no one seems comfortable bringing up.

It is time that children who are with single parents have the support they need.  That means single fathers caring for children should not be paying back social services for charges racked up by their errant ex-spouses who are kept away from children.  It means dads should be picking up the tab for the children they father and not running away.  It means perhaps we should be thinking about what marriage truly means and we consider the children who suffer their decisions.