All’s Not Fair When It Comes to Families : Here’s a novel idea: Make men equally responsible for the children they father.

All over America, angry white men are mad as hell at being ignored. Last November, they flexed their political muscle and showed the liberal elite that they’re not going to take it any more. Having been excluded from affirmative action, they now demand to be included in the Personal Responsibility Act.

How right they are. But their demands fall on deaf ears. Under the new contract on America, women still get all the attention. Both Democrats and Republicans seem obsessed with the behavior of mothers. Women, however, just can’t seem to get it right. Poor moms are supposed to leave their children, find a job and go out to work. Well-paid professional working mothers--like prosecutor Marcia Clark--should quit, stay home and care for their children. What could be clearer?

To be fair, not all welfare reformers think alike. Sensitive New Age men--like Bill Clinton--propose time limits on how long someone should feed at the public trough and workfare. Moderate men--like Washington Mayor Marion Barry--suggest “compassionate” solutions like mandatory birth-control implants.

Really tough men, the type who dream of fighting two wars simultaneously, tell us that Draconian cuts can turn starving women and children into responsible citizens.

All of these political actors ignore fathers--who don’t seem to exist any more--except in the Bible where they still beget generations of children. Most politicians, in fact, apparently believe that poor unmarried teen-age girls procreate by parthenogenesis.

What’s to be done?

Katha Pollitt, a columnist at the Nation and strong enthusiast of fatherhood, recently made the revolutionary proposal that men should be given equal responsibility for strengthening America’s families.

Newt Gingrich wasn’t listening, but I was. Drawing on some of her proposals, I hereby offer a few modest amendments to the new Personal Responsibility Act. If passed by Congress, these amendments would halve Aid to Families With Dependent Children payments, end welfare as we know it and return angry white men to the center of national attention, where they properly belong.

* Any man who fathers a child without marrying the mother would have to pay $10,000 a year or 20% of his income until the child reaches 21 years of age. If he can’t find a job (a lame excuse in job-rich America), the government would give him a workfare job. Until he coughs up the money, he would be required to live in a group home with other unwed fathers and attend therapeutic meetings at which he learned to stifle the urge to impregnate unmarried women.

* Any man who fathers a second child without marrying the mother would have to pay a second bundle of child support. If he is unemployed, he would have to find a job. If he is employed but can’t afford child support, he would be required to have a vasectomy. (If he wished, some of his sperm could be frozen for when he has mended his ways.)

* Because men don’t always know that they have fathered any children, the government would tax all men to provide support for those children who lack confirmed fathers. With characteristic generosity, columnist Pollitt suggests that those men who wish to avoid the tax can have “a vasectomy with sperm to be frozen at personal expense (Republican version) or by government subsidy (Democratic version).”

* The Personal Responsibility Act should not focus exclusively on young unmarried fathers. In the interest of maintaining America’s existing families, all men about to turn 50 would be rounded up and temporarily restrained in group residence homes equipped with cable television and sports facilities. Such temporary confinement would stave off the irrepressible urge to find a new wife 10 years older than their eldest child. This nifty amendment would prevent thousands of unnecessary divorces, decrease the number of middle-aged abandoned women and reduce the legions of sullen teen-agers committing random acts of violence in suburban malls.

Let’s hope Congress acts quickly. Men deserve equal treatment. It’s only fair. Besides, it’s the law.