Corrupt ideologies survive through slogans that tell lies. We don't need to go back to the USSR to demonstrate this; there are many examples in our own "modern" Ireland. The Irish Independent had a good one last week - a mocked-up "Wanted" poster illustrating a report about so-called "deadbeat dads". It had a photograph of the face of a young man, with the word "Wanted" and the figure "70,000" underneath. The caption read: "Wanted: 70,000 Deadbeat Dads for Failure to Pay Child Maintenance. Contact: The Department of Social Welfare," writes John Waters
If such a poster targeted single mothers, of course, the whole country would be up in arms; but let's not waste energy drawing attention to a double standard that everyone takes for granted. I note, too, that the report, by the newspaper's fine social affairs correspondent, David Quinn, contained just one reference to "deadbeat dads", which was accompanied by the qualifier "so-called".
The devil was chiefly in the illustration and headline. The report was summarised in the headline's allegation that "70,000 fathers are failing to pay maintenance towards their children". The report stated: "Almost 80,000 people, overwhelmingly women, are in receipt of the one-parent family payment. But in each case the absent father is required to pay towards the upkeep of the child if he can afford it. However, figures from the Department of Social and Family Affairs show that only 9,600 fathers are doing so." Hence, it was alleged, 70,000 fathers were "flouting the law and social welfare rules".
Here is a vivid illustration of the distance that can lie between fact and truth. To qualify for the one-parent family payment, the claimant must - theoretically - prove that she is bringing up her child or children "without the support of the other parent". I have heard of no case where the department has taken the most rudimentary steps to ascertain whether the so-called "absent father" has declined to support his child or children. When did the department last contact such a man and ask him if he was willing to marry the mother, or to accept joint, or even sole custody of his child/children? Not one of these 70,000 men owes mothers or the State a cent, because there can be no legal obligation on a father to pay "maintenance" for children he has not refused to support in these ways.
Many fathers do make payments to mothers, however, for reasons that should disquiet us profoundly. Over the past decade, I have been contacted by an average of perhaps a dozen fathers a month, usually because they are living separately from their children and are being denied contact. A question that always arises in these conversations is whether they are paying towards their children's upkeep. Almost invariably they are, and usually such payments are in cash because a declared payment is in part deductible from the mother's social welfare allowance. Where the rights of a father and/or a child are being abused, I advise the cessation of such payments until the abuses stop, but many fathers are terrified of endangering the fragile relationships they have with their children. A man from Mars might approach this with the naive view that there is an interesting journalistic angle in the abuse of children by mothers to obtain money: the terms "ransom", "fraud" and "blackmail" might spring to his politically untutored lips.
But this is just the start of it. The real "story" is that, for two decades, the Irish State has been usurping the role of fathers by, in effect, offering inducements to mothers to rear children alone. By asserting that the father is not involved with his children, a mother can obtain an array of benefits and allowances.
To compete with the Stepfather State, a father nowadays needs to be earning at least twice the average industrial wage, just so it makes "sense" from the mother's perspective to have him around. Needless to say, many couples continue to cohabit surreptitiously while the woman claims the benefits anyway.
Over a third of mothers claiming the one- parent family allowance are separated or divorced, many having deserted their husbands, who were never given the option of continuing to support their children. In granting such women the one-parent family payment, the Department of Social Welfare is acting illegally, because it is a principle of benefits law that deserters should not be allowed to profit from their desertion. Having sanctioned such payments, the department goes on to demonise and pursue the deserted husband, designating him a "liable relative" and "maintenance debtor", when in truth he is the injured party whose children have been abducted.
There are rich pickings here for journalists seeking interesting, indeed sensational, material about the corruption of public policy. Instead, our media provides the corruption with the covering fire of cliche and half-truth, turning the spotlight on the innocent, while the criminals sleep the sleep of the just.
For in-depth analysis of the one-parent family allowance, see the website of the National Men's Council of Ireland, www.family-men.com