Why should we presume that these young deadbeat moms/child abusers should be rewarded by the welfare system? If a young woman will not be economically responsible for a child she bears, and she asks for AFDC, we as a society should first offer custody of the child to a father who will raise the child using his own earned income. We should presume that parental economic viability in raising children is always in the child's best interest.
The American Fathers Coalition's Bill Harrington has stated that, "The father should be the placement of first choice if the mother applies for AFDC." Fathers of children on welfare earn an average of $15,000 per year and many are able and willing to raise their children. This would free the mothers to go to school, get a skill, and stay off welfare.
Children would be enabled to have an existence outside the degrading traps of the welfare system. Father custody would save our society billions of dollars by simply allowing fathers to raise their children as a substitute to mothers who would do so only by using the welfare system as a supplemental uncle daddy with a fat wallet.
This first step for ending welfare as we know it is logical, simple, constitutional, moral, and common sense. The father should be the placement of first choice if a mother applies for AFDC. The solution is appallingly simple, yet unattractive because press and society have presented fathers as bumbling and incompetent at raising children. While many fathers may be neither fit nor financially able to be the primary parent, it is estimated that 50 percent would and could. No other single approach would lower welfare costs by 50 percent so effectively, while at the same time providing children with solid, loving homes.
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