Designated Dad

Maria Martinez is never sure how the new, unwed mothers will respond to her visit. So, as the medical records technician makes her morning rounds on the maternity ward at Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, she tries to make her message friendly, positive and brief.

“I’m going to give you a paternity form,” she tells one mother, still dazed from childbirth. “It’s just for the father to declare that he’s the biological father of the baby and that he’s willing to have responsibility for the baby.”

Hours after birth, the mother in a fog, the father drunk with pride, what better time to step in and ask unwed parents to sign papers establishing legal paternity? Yet today, as usual, her efforts appear to be an uphill proposition.

One mother says that it sounds like a good idea but that the father wasn’t expected that day: “He went camping.”

Another says she thought the father might sign the paper because he was happy he finally had a girl baby. But then again, he might not because he already has to pay child support for a 6-year-old son with another woman.

These are the front lines of contemporary social work, and this is the Paternity Opportunity Program, California’s struggling version of federally mandated efforts to catch unwed fathers fast and early before they disappear.

Reconnecting absent dads with their children is at the heart of current social reforms, and paternity establishment has become a popular and relatively inexpensive way to go about it. After 18 months of being implemented in all hospitals in the state, 28,000 fathers have voluntarily signed the forms that establish a legal presumption of fatherhood, according to state officials. Still, that represents only 10% of the increasing number of children born outside marriage--now one-third of all births in the U.S.

Program supporters are counting on fathers to be much more likely to acknowledge paternity in those magical hours after childbirth. If they commit then, it is hoped they will be more likely to begin a pattern of responsible parental behavior--and save the state money on child support enforcement and welfare.

Says Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Schwartz: “It’s a good moment to give him the opportunity to declare himself as the father. As time passes, the relationship deteriorates, people drift apart. He begins to wonder if he was the only one.”

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In Los Angeles County, 51,000 of the district attorney’s 730,000 child support cases are welfare cases with unknown fathers. An additional 200,000 are considered uncollectable because of insufficient information, a representative says.

In poorer communities, many fathers have become “underground fathers,” afraid that public exposure will cause welfare benefits to be lost to their children, says Ed Pitt, associate director of the Fatherhood Project in New York. At the same time, similar to middle-aged, married fathers, they are looking for signals of what’s truly expected of them. Typically, it’s the courts, schools and hospitals that give them the message.

The POP program is one way society is showing fathers that the expectations are being raised, regardless of whether they are married or employed, says Eloise Anderson, director of the state Department of Social Services. “We need to rethink this thing about what parents are all about. We need to have a partnership,” she says. “If they’re not married, it doesn’t mean they should not have partnerships around the children. . . .

“We know that if we have equal expectations of fathers and mothers financially, the child does better in terms of moving out of poverty. When fathers are engaged in the family financially, there is less and less of a need for the government to take over the role of what has historically been the father’s role.”

No one expects the program to turn casual inseminators into Bill Cosby, she says. But, “It’s one more tool in the bag of tools we think we need as a society to make it better for our children.”

The department’s Declaration of Paternity is an official looking form in multicolored quintuplicate. It asks both mothers and fathers for their names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Under Section C (“Read This Section Before Signing”), it warns men that they will be liable for court-ordered child support, but informs them that they will also gain rights to seek custody and visitation or to agree to adoption.

Even if they sign it, the men currently have three years to challenge the form with a blood test before the declaration becomes legally binding. Pending revisions would reduce the period to 60 days.

Linda Patterson, a child support manager with the social services department, says the program is working “extremely well” nationwide but that California’s results are far below the expected 35% signature rate.

She says problems include the state’s transient population, too many negative warnings on the form, and the fact that many fathers mistakenly believe they are already established as legal fathers if their name is on the birth certificate.

State lawmakers are considering a package of bills that they hope will increase the number of men willing to sign the form. Revisions would include requirements to sign the paternity form before a father’s name could appear on the birth certificate, softer language in the warnings section and expanding the program to prenatal clinics.

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At Queen of Angels, a hospital with high numbers of unwed and Medi-Cal patients, it is clear that many fathers who sign the form don’t need much persuasion.

Elder Castro, 19, a happy young man with two part-time jobs, signed without hesitation. He says he is already helping support his girlfriend, who lives with him and his parents.

“The idea of that form is to help the girl and I agree with it,” he says. “Many fathers walk out of a relationship and then they don’t want to pay nothing and obviously it’s their child. I believe every father should be made to sign that.”

But Martinez says others who sign it simply haven’t understood. Many of them don’t speak English, and even though she explains that signing the form is voluntary and that forms are available in Spanish, “some people think it’s part of the hospital papers and that it’s mandatory,” she says.

Many poor unwed mothers deny knowing the father so they can meet eligibility requirements for Medi-Cal or Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Martinez says. It’s true, Patterson says, that the state will try to get unwed fathers of children whose mothers apply for benefits to pay one way or another. But signing the form has no direct effect on benefits, she adds, unless “they have out and out lied about the father being in the home.”

Patterson says the program enjoys broad political support, although some question how effective it can be when fathers are unemployed or cannot earn enough money to lift them and their families out of poverty. For those reasons, one social worker calls the program “ludicrous.”

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Supporters of both mothers’ and fathers’ rights groups say they believe the program is a step in the right direction. But Reginald Brass, founder of the Los Angeles support group My Child Says Daddy, says the forms may create more custody fights once unwed fathers become aware that they can have new ammunition.

Martinez says some young mothers--or their mothers--are worried that the forms will give the unwed fathers too many rights.

“Some moms say, ‘No! He got me pregnant and was not around for nine months and now he wants rights? No!’ ” she says.

In one case, after a father signed the form, the mother’s mother stormed the hospital halls “scolding and yelling” that the man would take control but not provide for the baby. But there was nothing she could do because her daughter agreed and also signed the form, Martinez says.

Castro says his girlfriend’s mother is also unhappy with him and has not allowed him to marry her daughter, who is 16. “I want to marry her. I just don’t know how to without the mom’s permission,” he says. “She thinks we’ll be apart in a little while. I told her it won’t happen. How is she going to know if she doesn’t give me a chance?”