In family court we routinely make one parent superior to the other with terms like custodial parent and financially with terms like obligee and obligor concerning child support. On its surface child support seems like a perfectly reasonable idea, but in practice what it does is drive one parent out of the lives of their children, especially if they are poor.

One of the biggest problems with this system is that although financial support is rigorously enforced, and often in the most counterproductive ways like removing professional licenses and incarceration, access to one’s children is hardly enforced at all. People of low income (low-income obligors) are expected to live on $145 a week or less or face incarceration. It happens all the time, and it continues to destroy parental bonds in Black and brown communities disproportionately, simply because on average they have less money than their white counterparts to keep up with payments.

This system is a modern-day system of apartheid and yes, slavery, for financially poor obligors, and should be on the radar of everyone, especially those concerned with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ali Starkley

Groton