Dr. Dora Barrancos opened the series organized by the UNR Gender and Sexualities Area on the social organization of care.

According to the latest data from the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, 70% of separated parents fail to pay child support. Faced with this problem, many mothers face lengthy legal proceedings without effective guarantees of payment, which violates children's and adolescents' basic right to food. According to UNICEF data, 68% of single-parent households are below the poverty line and 23% are below the extreme poverty line because they cannot afford to pay for the basic food basket.

The obligation to support children, established by the Civil and Commercial Code, includes everything they need: education, clothing, a place to live, health, entertainment, and a job or profession. The rule is that both parents have this obligation until the child turns 21, or until 25 if they continue to study or train for a trade or art and cannot support themselves.

Failure to fulfill this parental responsibility entails a form of direct economic and symbolic violence against mothers, who, by the overwhelming majority, shoulder the burden of caregiving duties, with a much greater workload and responsibilities.

Added to this is the disjointed, ineffective, and re-victimizing nature of the State's intervention, with timescales and mechanisms that fail to guarantee compliance with basic rights. The first major problem women face is access to justice, with cases they cannot afford and delays that make it very difficult to sustain a trial. The second is enforcement of payment, because it is not enforced even after a judgment is issued.

For this reason, registries of debtors of child support payments have been implemented throughout the country since the late 90s. These registries are used when the trial has concluded but the judgment has not been complied with, and payment has not been made. The province of Santa Fe has a Registry of Delinquent Child Support Debtors, which prevents those listed from completing procedures such as obtaining driver's licenses or participating in state bidding processes. However, compliance with these measures is neither guaranteed nor monitored.  

Recently, there have been several court rulings seeking to punish such behavior, and at the same time, a debate has sparked that has led to the promotion of bills to curb this injustice. A court ruling in Rosario prohibited a delinquent parent from leaving the country, suspended his driver's license, and also barred him from entering the Newell's Old Boys stadium until he paid the full amount of child support owed. Another similar case occurred in Córdoba, where a judge barred a debtor from entering the Belgrano stadium, ruling that the father's failure to comply with his child support obligations deprived his child of an essential right.

Organization of care

La Universidad Nacional de Rosario Through the Gender and Sexualities Area, the organization has been implementing actions and policies that address the problem of structural inequalities based on gender. Within this framework, it organized the series "Responsible Parenthood," which seeks to focus the debate on the best interests of children and adolescents, promoting discussions and generating concrete tools to eradicate inequalities related to caregiving and to establish better regulatory and institutional frameworks to address these issues at the community level.

The first meeting, "Debates and Proposals on the Social Organization of Care," was led by Dr. Dora Barrancos, who addressed parenthood and children's rights. She highlighted the historical and symbolic roots of patriarchy and its impact on social and family structures. She emphasized the rights of children and women, as well as the role of feminist activism in ensuring their fulfillment.

"The most common phrase heard is 'she spends everything,'" the sociologist gestures ironically, considering this expression an exercise in violence. "What we need is not to punish but to prevent," she says, presenting before a large audience gathered at the headquarters of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, a proposal to tackle the problem at its root: that the mother go to Anses with her children's documents, declare that she has separated, and request that child support be withheld at source, that is, from the father's salary.

However, this project faces a problem: unregistered informal employment. In these cases, the researcher suggests that the indicator be economic output, something that AFIP, now Arca, can do by cross-referencing data. Regarding the amounts, there is an INDEC child-rearing index that is calculated by taking into account the expenses of housing, transportation, food, clothing, school supplies, and everything else children and adolescents need to live.

"We want men to be held accountable for what they do, and a withholding tax law would be preventative, reduce lawsuits, and be a giant step forward," she affirms, emphasizing that Argentina is one of the countries where this scourge is most prevalent, and there is a permissive social imagination that allows this attitude to be mitigated, with a certain condescension. No one says, "He's an irresponsible father." For Barrancos, the university plays a fundamental role in building a greater sense of respect for these fundamental rights of children.

Journalist: Victoria Arrabal/Photographer: Camila Casero