This 2004 Pittsburgh City Paper article from journalist Brentin Mock is a great read. Here’s an excerpt, but we encourage to read it all:

There are some real bastards out there.

We’re talking about the “men” who refuse to financially support the babies they’ve made, even though they have the income to do so. We call them “deadbeats.”

But then there’s the 2.5 million noncustodial fathers who are missing payments not because they are deadbeat, but because they are dead broke: either unemployed, jailed, disabled or making below poverty level. A study conducted by psychologist Stanford Braver and published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry shows that when divorced men are employed and making enough, most all of them are up to beat with their payments.

In Los Angeles, ads produced by the National Fatherhood Initiative were placed at bus stops throughout the city featuring the sullen faces of apparently neglected black children. One ad reads, “Easter Bunny. Tooth Fairy. Daddy. Eventually kids stop believing in things they don’t see.” Another one, “Dear Daddy, my Mommy can’t be my Daddy too.” The messages and the faces imply it is only black fathers who skip out on their duties, an implication protested by African Americans in L.A. The nonpartisan Urban Institute reports, in fact, that of the 2.5 million poor noncustodial fathers, 41 percent are black and 40 percent are white.

This This 2004 Pittsburgh City Paper article from journalist Brentin Mock is a great read. Here’s an excerpt, but we encourage to read it all: This 2004 Pittsburgh City Paper article from journalist Brentin Mock is a great read. Here’s an excerpt, but we encourage to read it all: