[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 82 (Friday, June 24, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        KEEPING FATHERS AT HOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] will be recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, tonight 15 million children, about one-
third of the children in America, will go to bed in a house where no 
father lives. In many cases they do not even know who their father is. 
Yet 90 percent of the children on public assistance are in this 
situation. They live in fatherless homes.
  The Journal of Research and Crime and Delinquency, which indicates 
and tracks the correlation between crime and family structure, has said 
that the real predicter of crime in a neighborhood is not income level 
and it is not education. But it is how many fathers live at home and 
how many do not.
  Seventy percent of the children in long-term juvenile homes grew up 
in households without fathers. It goes on and on about the impact of 
what it is like to grow up in a family without a father.
  One of the interesting cases is that of abused children--the odds 
that if the father abuses that child--it is 40 to 1 that that father is 
not the child's biological father. This is a tremendous problem, Mr. 
Speaker. It is something that I do not feel we as a body have done 
enough to address, because if you look at these statistics and you 
track along teenage pregnancy, drop-out rates, lower grades, crime 
problems, emotional problems and so forth, yes, there is a relationship 
between living in a household with a father and living without one.
  We talk about welfare reform. We debate it over and over again. Yet 
we are missing the basic component of it, and that is getting the dad 
back at home.
  Now, if you look at our society and what we have done to fathers, 
look at them on television. Fathers are depicted as being silly, 
superfluous buffoons. They are overgrown children and silly or, if not, 
they are the greedy, malicious person who is the protagonist in the 
story and one who is causing all the problems. That is the Hollywood 
depiction of a father.
  Of course, then there is the politically correct depiction of a 
father, one who cries and whines, really, not just at proper times but 
incessantly as a way to diminish his masculinity. He will just show 
emotions at all costs and basically to try to run from what I would say 
would be his masculine role in the family structure.

  But the government's view is the worst, Mr. Speaker, because what we 
say is that if a dad lives at home, the family welfare units, his 
income added to the total income is what causes the family to have to 
go back out on the streets, what causes the family not to be eligible 
for public assistance and what causes the family in most cases to break 
up, his income.
  I believe that is, we are going to do something about crime, do 
something for education, something for teenage pregnancy and so forth, 
we have to start with the dad. We have to have the father at home.
  If we do reform welfare and, based on some of the things around here, 
I do not know that we ever will get significant welfare reform done, 
but if we do, a chief component has to be getting dad's income in 
there. That father has to become part of the formula. He cannot act 
like an alley cat, get some woman pregnant or in some cases a girl, 
that is what they are, children, and then run off to the next conquest. 
We have to say to that young 17-year-old boy that, you are indeed on 
the hook, just as much as the 17-year-old mother is, and as long as 
that child is a member of the minority, until she becomes 21 years old, 
she is your responsibility. And regardless of where you are, a portion 
of your paycheck and energy is going to be going to raise that family.
  But where he is, I hope, is at home under the same roof with the 
biological mother. Because, Mr. Speaker, statistics tell us that we 
have to do this if we are going to rebuild the family structure and 
bring down crime and the education dropout and so forth.
  What I would like to see, as a Member of Congress, is a study on 
bringing the dad back in. Let us forget a traditional conservative view 
of welfare reform. Let us forget the traditional liberal view of 
welfare reform. Let us just talk about family reform and getting that 
father back at home, getting them under one roof.
  I think the first thing we have to start with is rent reform that 
will allow the dad to live with the family and not have his income 
throw them out of public housing. There is a bill on that. I have 
cosponsored that. But that is only a step.
  I think the second thing is saying that if you get someone pregnant 
and you are a man that you are on the hook for 21 years. We are going 
to track you down and so forth. We do not have a bill on that right 
now, but I want to look into it. And I am trying to separate this from 
a sweeping welfare reform and only target on where I believe the 
critical need is.

                          ____________________