Governor Ridge announced the Pennsylvania Fatherhood Initiative in September of 1999. A multi- agency effort involving the state departments of Community and Economic Development, Corrections, Education, Health, Labor and Industry, and Public Welfare, and the Board of Probation and Parole. A project that will invest nearly $6 million in fatherhood-promotion services.
Missing in the initiative is why so many families are without father's.
Fathers can be kept away by a vengeful spouse, a system that truly does not recognize the rights of a Father to be a parent, a system that makes it almost financially impossible to pursue visitation and finally by a system that presumes a mother automatically is entitled to be the primary custodian of children.
Missing are the rights of children.
A mother can raise the issue of paternity to make a man lose is parental rights. A man can raise the issue of paternity, prove he is not the biological parent and the courts can force him to pay child support even if DNA proves he is not the biological father.
Where are the rights of the children being denied their biological father? Imagine for one moment that your parentage was kept from you simply because you were the means to a support check.
A parent not up to date on their support payments will lose their driver's license, lose their recreational license, have their name plastered all over the news, and have their wages attached or go to jail.
A parent denying visitation, well that is a different story. Nothing happens, not really. Mothers do not go to jail; they do not lose their drivers license or their professional licenses.
Time lost, can never be made up, never. Years of dealing with the stress and anxiety of being denied the right to see your very own children grow and become adults without you is a very cruel existence.
It would be nice to see something other than rhetoric about how important Father's are to their children. It would be very nice for the courts to really understand how important it is for children to have their dads involved in their lives on a daily basis. You only have to sit in a family court for one day to see how the system works and does not work. The system is ready willing and able to put fathers in jail, show me a mother prosecuted for denying visitation.
