Actually, technically speaking, it wasn’t a bumper sticker—it was a license-plate frame—but it’s a distinction without a difference. I followed this car for quite a while yesterday before I noticed the message: “PARENTS: PAY YOUR CHILD SUPPORT”—an injunction that assumes an awful lot. OK, so it’s better that people who owe child support pay it, but is that really the message people need to hear? Why assume the divorce and just focus on mitigating the consequences? Wouldn’t it be better to say “WORK ON YOUR MARRIAGE” or “BLESS YOUR MARRIAGE” or even (if you want to stick with the original hectoring tone) just “DON’T GET DIVORCED”?
“PAY YOUR CHILD SUPPORT” asks nothing of people but that they write a check once a month. A message suggesting they do what it takes to avoid getting divorced in the first place asks considerably more—things like humility, self-denial, repentance, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and putting someone else ahead of oneself and one’s own desires. The real problem isn’t the percentage of people who pay child support, as significant as that is—it’s the percentage of people who think divorce is all about them and what they want, and who seek their own desires at the expense of everyone else.
Of course, once you start challenging that mindset, you don’t just make other people uncomfortable—you put yourself on the spot, too, because you’re challenging the whole cultural system of which you’re a part; it makes it a lot harder to get the frisson of superiority that “PAY YOUR CHILD SUPPORT” can give you effortlessly. In asking something meaningful of others, after all, you inevitably require something meaningful of yourself as well.
(To be sure, there are those who would avoid getting divorced if they could, but can’t, because the divorce is driven by their spouse’s behavior and decisions. They’re victims of the problem, not the problem; this reality doesn’t make identifying the true problem any less important.)