Whenever you have an obligation, it’s expected that you try to carry it out to the fullest extent of your abilities.
Paramount among these responsibilities is caring for children if you have them. This is one of the most basic principles of being a parent: You provide for your family.
The Louisiana Department of Child and Family Services recently released its “most wanted”; a list of 18 dads who collectively owe $866,000 to their respective children. The requirement for being on the list is owing at least $20,000 in child support.
The clear winner on the list is Richard Miller, a 53-year-old who owes $128,000 to his children.
Now, I understand we are living in hard times, and jobs are hard to come by, but neglecting your children to the point of owing several hundred thousand dollars in child support is unacceptable.
Seriously, they’re your own kids, for Pete’s sake.
The total outstanding money owed to DCFS statewide is more than $1.3 billion.
The state legislature should draft appropriate measures to ensure these losers pay what they owe, and I have a splendid idea for just that.
These ne’er-do-wells should be rounded up, set in stocks out in public and flogged by the children they’ve turned a blind eye to. We should let these neglected individuals literally beat the deadbeats.
They would then be given a choice: Either begin regular payments or have all of their assets liquidated and the appropriate amount given to their children. Seeing as how they were just publicly flogged by said children, I think the decision would be pretty easy to make.
The sheer embarrassment of the punishment and the threat of having all of their assets liquidated would make even the stingiest father want to pay up.
This would have the added benefit of allowing the real victims — their children — to work through any abandonment issues they may have in a very cathartic and public manner.
Everyone wins — well, except for the dads, of course.
It’s important to note that in this state, judges tend to award custody to mothers, and fathers are sometimes unfairly seen as absentee parents. However, I don’t think that is the case here.
Now, I know what you’re thinking — this is cruel and unusual punishment. I’d argue just the opposite: That these fine folks would be getting off light if it were only a public flogging. They have reneged on the single most important thing a person can do — caring for your own children — and they deserve much worse for it.
In a perfectly just world, there would be mandatory chemical castrations for these guys. If our goal is for deadbeat dads to make their payments, then we need a nuclear deterrent for guys who even think about shirking their duties as fathers.
Even some of our most morally bankrupt characters in fiction know that they have to provide for their family. Don Draper from “Mad Men” runs around on his wife with his neighbor, but this philanderer at least has the decency to make sure his three kids are comfortably clothed and fed. It’s also important to note that he ran around on his ex-wife, as well.
Gus Fring from “Breaking Bad” once said that, “And a man, a man provides. And he does it even when he’s not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it. Because he’s a man.” That’s coming from a drug lord who killed people just to send a message.
Missing one payment on child support is suspect, but missing enough to almost amount to $1 million is insane. These guys need to be rounded up and their stocks constructed. It would be better than what is happening now, which is nothing.
Ryan McGehee is a 20-year-old political science, history and international studies major from Zachary, La.