August is Child Support Awareness Month across our great land. I have endeavored to make everyone possible aware that our national arrears are now over $118 BILLION DOLLARS and no matter if you are a single parent, paying parent, childless, grandparent, a retired person; this affects everyone in America.
Why?
Because the future belongs to the children being raised now. And we all pay taxes. So no matter where you are on “children’s issues”, remember that today’s child is tomorrow’s nursing home administrator. And with 73% of all kids on IV-D rolls receiving Medicaid due to unpaid medical support, when you are ready for Medicare there might not be enough left for you.
I’m going to get off my soapbox now and introduce you to a very promising young writer. Her name is Kinsley Cuen and she is in her senior year at college with a course load that breaks me out in hives, she has a double major and a triple minor that includes communications. She is an amazing communicator and her essay’s and writing are deep and evocative. Kinsley is also a “non-payment of child support survivor”. I had asked Kinsley if she would agree to contribute to my blog and I’m so glad she said yes.
Here is what “child support” means to Kinsley:
My mom falls asleep on the couch every night, sometimes before she even eats dinner. My siblings and I try to never wake her up because we know how tired she must be. Working as a special education teacher all day and waitressing at night only to come home to five kids of her own must make the days feel endless. The stress and worries that come from being a single parent receiving no child support must only make it worse.
I associate the word child support with the feeling of hopelessness and visualize it as a deep, dark chasm. Once you lose your support, you fall over the edge and while everyone’s concerned voices echo down to you, no one ever actually pulls you out. No matter how much you shout up for help or how many of you sink to the bottom of the void, the person who pushed you over the edge is never held accountable and no one ever tosses you a ladder to climb out.
In reality, child support to me is the home I could’ve had, the meals that wouldn’t have been left on the doorstep, the extra jobs my mother wouldn’t be working, and the tears over college tuition I wouldn’t have cried. It’s every opportunity a sibling or I missed out on, the exhaustion in my mother’s eyes, and the money anxiety I get every time I spend a dollar.
As a young adult who has reaped the consequences of unpaid child support, I can recognize a larger issue at play. This is not just a failure of the individual, but a systemic failure. A lack of accountability in a corrupted system, a lack of support for those who are most vulnerable, and a lack of resources for parents struggling on both the giving and receiving ends. The individual cannot be held accountable if the courts and governing bodies have no accountability.
By taking a top-down approach and holding those in positions of power and influence accountable, we have the power to create systemic change and offer up justice, resources, and opportunities to those who need them most. To children of hard-working single mothers or fathers who just need someone to throw them that ladder.
Do your part.
Everyone- please take a breath and read what Kinsley wrote one more time. Slowly. Because what she says matters. She matters.
#KidsLivesMatter #ChildSupportAwareness #EndFinancialAbuse
It’s amazing that so many people are unaware of issue. Maybe because women tend to think they don’t deserve better, or we’re trained to just to just “suck it up” for the sake of our kids, and keep going. Its sad though that we are showing our daughters that this is how women live.
Sadly this type Abuse is still tolerated by courts and most of society which condemns all Other forms and types of abuse.