THE LAST WORD
Richards, Kay
THE LAST WORD Kay Richards Phantom Fathers One of the questions I'm asked most often as a single mother is whether my daughter's father pays child support. I say no, he doesn't. And frequently I...
...Efforts to force unwilling fathers to take responsibility too often undermine the already precarious dignity and peace of mind of mothers and their children...
...Now she is embroiled in the state's attempts to track him down, prove paternity (not a difficult matter these days), and squeeze support payments out of him...
...If he maintains his silence, I hope I will know what to say to her about him...
...The father pays, but bitterly...
...But in the meantime, I believe my child and I are a family—not a broken family, but a family, whole, healthy, and not too darkly shadowed by the phantom father...
...I know that the route I have chosen is not the best route for every unmarried woman who has a child...
...She is his child, and although neither of us intended to have a child just then, and although it was my lapse in diligence that led to her conception, and although it was my decision not to abort—still, she is his child...
...I have a friend who receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children—temporarily, she hopes...
...I am sorry he made that choice—sorry for her, that she cannot know him, and for him, that he cannot know her...
...I have been able to choose it because I have felt assured (I hope not mistakenly) that I could earn an adequate living for us both...
...After all, he has a responsibility...
...I could say no less to him in return: The degree of his involvement in her life would be his decision...
...He chose not to be involved—not at all...
...But I am not he, and his decision was not mine to make...
...As individuals and as a society, we ought to see such efforts for what they often are: futile attempts to reconstitute the broken traditional family—mother, father, children...
...But I have accepted his choice, consciously at least, although it still saddens me...
...Still, accepting it seems more and more the right thing to do, as I have heard the stories of other single mothers who have not accepted their former lovers' reluctance to be fathers...
...Many women know they cannot...
...I'm afraid I do not have the stamina for such battles, or the assurance that I could keep hostility toward the father, constantly reactivated, from spilling over onto his child...
...Of my decision to have the baby, once she was conceived, he said, "It is your decision...
...And frequently I am told that he ought to—and that I should see to it that he does...
...As it is, my child is, as her father said she would be, my child, not our child...
...So far, she approves of the effort: She wants her child to have a visible father...
...Meanwhile, I try to honor the best of him that I see in her...
...I wish, of course, that society would simply provide the support, in money and social services, that all children need...
...I know one single mother, self-supporting, who sued the father of her child for child support...
...She is locked now in perpetual battles over visitation and could be drawn into a custody fight at any time...
...Yes, I suppose he has...
...I hope we find a way to make it work, on a large scale, again...
...She suffers under the force of his anger...
...It is the only sad note in what is otherwise the most joyous event of my life...
...If I were he, I think, surely I would accept that tie, bear the responsibility, tolerate the complications, and share the joy...
...Will the bond thus forged between father and child be worth all this conflict and anguish...
...I happen to like that traditional model, although I am not following it...
...But if she did not approve, she would still have to go along with the manhunt—or lie and say she does not know who the father was or where he might be...
...As a condition of obtaining AFDC benefits, she supplied the state with the name of her child's father...
...I would hope that, if he were ever to change his mind and want to reenter her life, I would know how to behave...
...Kay Richards is a pen-name...
...And sorry, too, for me, who will have to explain, in some way, his choice to her...
Vol. 51 • August 1987 • No. 8
