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Dads often pay child support directly to moms

Letters to the Editor

The Toronto Star, May 20, 1999, page A25, by Grant Wilson, President, Canadian Children's Rights Council

Overall, your Hard Times series on welfare recipients is well-written and long overdue. Much of the public have misconceptions about the lives of men, women and children on welfare.

I must, however, take exception to a reference to child financial support in your May 8 article, The children are the invisible poor, where you stated "Only about 15 perecent of single welfare mothers get any support from the fathers. When they do, that amount is automatically deducted from their welfare cheque."

That incorrectly gives the impression that only 15 per cent of fathers of children on welfare pay child support. You did correctly state that all the child financial support is effectively supposed to go to the government and not directly to the mother to help the children.

The actual number of support-paying fathers is much higher. Fathers frequently pay cash directly to the mother for the sake of the children.

Can you treally blame them? They want their child financial support to benefit their children living in poverty and not increase government coffers.

I have discussed this issue with a senior male-bashing government offical who erroneously blamed fathers for violating the welfare regulations with regard to paying unreported cash to mothers on welfare.

It was the mothers who were violating the welfare laws by not reporting it.

But who can blame them, when they are trying to take care of their children and themselves, often in desperate circumstances with Mike Harris' harassing welfare officials and payment cuts?

GRANT WILSON
President
Canadian Children's Rights Council