Child Support Reform
Child Support and Children’s Well-Being
Angelica L Fleming
Virginia College Abstract
Child support reform is an issue of central importance to many families today. This paper concentrates on how parents who live apart from their children divide the responsibility for taking care of them and the economic and noneconomic effects of these arrangements on the children. The report centers on the causes and effects of child support. My intent is to provide an overview of the many studies on child support, custody, and visitation. I present information needed to help evaluate in a broad method, the effects of child support on children, their mothers, and their fathers. The effects of child support are sometimes different for children than …show more content…
for their parents, and sometimes different for mothers than for fathers. Any decision about child support policy requires complementing the competing interests of children, mothers, fathers, and the state. Children are the weakest among those with competing interests, so therefore they are the central focus of this report. I put emphasis on their economic needs because these needs inspire recent child support reforms. Plus, financial tension affects the emotional environment of families and parents’ capability to care for children.
Table of Contents
Demographic Change and Child Support
Family Support Act of 1988
Children’s Living Arrangements
Legal Parenthood and Joint Legal Custody
Paternity
Attaining New Parents
Children’s Economic Needs and Economic Disadvantages of Children Who Live Away From a Parent
Economic Resources and Children’s Needs
Economic Needs of Children and the Nonresident Father 's Contributions of Child Support
Factors Associated With Paying Support
The Effectiveness of Child Support in Decreasing Poverty
Can Fathers Afford Child Support?
Who Meets Children’s Economic Needs If Fathers Do Not?
Does It Matter for Children Who Provides for Their Economic Needs?
Patterns of Contact of Nonresident Parents and Children
Contact and Children’s Well-Being: The Role of Conflict with Parents
Social/Emotional Security and Father Substitutes
Child Support Policy and Children’s Families
Summary
Child Support and Children’s Well-Being
Demographic Change and Child Support
There are over 1/4 of children living in a household maintained by one parent (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011). Almost all of these children live with one parent because they were born outside of marriage or because their parents are separated or divorced. Since the middle of the century, most children who lived in a single-parent household did this because they had lost a parent through death (Bane, 1976). This demographic change is important for legislators because many programs that help poor children in single-parent households were initially intended to help widowed mothers. Today, most children in single-parent households have another parent living somewhere who may have the ability to help pay for their living expenses.
Family Support Act of 1988
The Family Support Act of 1988 situates the legal stage for considering matters of child support and the effects of child support. This act is one of the most recent in a series of federal laws over about 20 years created to strengthen child support enforcement. The Family Support Act of 1988 has two major purposes: (a) to improve the system for administering private child support transfers between parents to help support their children, and (b) to establish work programs and work provisions for parents who participate in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which is the public support or welfare system for children (Garfinkel, 1992).
The Family Support Act of 1988 has three main and very important stipulations regarding child support orders. The first piece requires states to strengthen paternity establishment for children born outside of marriage. Paternity establishment is important because it identifies a child’s legal parents. This is the first step in determining who is responsible for taking care of the child. The second piece commands consistent guidelines within states for child support orders. The third piece requires cases that go through the Office of Child Support Enforcement to be reviewed every 3 years. Child support orders may be increased if the nonresident parent’s income increases and decreased if income decreases. Another major part of the Family Support Act of 1988 addresses child support collection. Child support payments may be withheld from the nonresident parent’s earnings, in the same way that income tax is withheld, as a way of routinely collecting the child support obligation. This requirement went into effect in 1990 for cases in the Office of Child Support Enforcement, and in 1994 for all new cases. (Garfinkel, 1992)
Where and with children live specify what their physical environment is like and the resources that they have straight access to. Co-residence gives parents opportunities for more cherished interactions and the adult supervision which is necessary for successful socialization of children. The majority, 87%, of children who live with a single parent live with their mother (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011). Some evidence indicates that children who relocate more often have more adjustment problems, but it remains unclear whether the moving causes the adjustment problems or whether the child’s living arrangement is changed because the child is having problems. Studies that look at both children whose parents are divorced and children whose parents are not divorced show that frequent moving causes problems in school.
Legal Parenthood and Joint Legal Custody
After divorce or separation, parents negotiate legal custody. Legal custody creates the formal right to make decisions about major aspects of the child’s life. The most common exception is when parents have joint legal custody and the children live most of the time with the mother. The quality of the parents’ relationship with each other and the parents’ involvement with the children before the divorce, may also explain why families with joint legal custody have higher levels of involvement by both parents after separation. Men that took a dynamic role in taking care of children before a divorce would be likely to do so afterward as well (Miller,1993).
Paternity
The legal responsibilities for children born outside of marriage are organized differently than for children of divorce. State laws assume that for children born in marriage, the child’s legal father is the mother’s husband. The case for children born outside of marriage, the child’s father may be easy to recognize socially, but this is not the same as legally identifying the father. One reason that the Family Support Act of 1988 emphasized paternity establishment is that there is room for improvement on this aspect of child support enforcement.
Attaining New Parents
After their parents separate children may acquire new family members. While the noneconomic effects of remarriage vary, acquiring a stepparent, especially a stepfather, enhances the economic resources available to children. This reduces the economic disadvantage of living in a single-parent household. Grandparents may also help provide children’s needs. Living with a grandparent is more common for children born outside of marriage than for children whose parents are divorced (Bumpass & Raley, 1995).
Children’s Economic Needs and
Economic Disadvantages of Children Who Live Away From a Parent
It is difficult for a child to be happy without nutritious food, warm clothes, and a safe place to live. For children whose parents lived together before separation, family income declines by about one third when the father leaves the household (Bianchi & McArthur, 1991). Losing the father’s income is not the only economic disadvantage these children face. In addition, parents who separate or divorce have lower incomes even before separation than parents who stay together. Once parents separate, they bear the costs of maintaining two households instead of one. Children born to unmarried parents suffer even more severe economic disadvantages. Financial problems may affect children indirectly by creating stress and anxiety and reducing mothers’ emotional welfare. Mothers’ emotional adjustment affects child rearing practices and may reduce the quality of parent-child relationships.
Economic Resources and Children’s Needs
Children who live with a single mother rely solely on her earnings to meet their needs. Single mothers earn very much less than do married fathers because single mothers have more child care responsibilities, less training and education, and more disadvantages in the labor market (Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986). The main focus is on nonresident fathers instead of nonresident mothers because, as noted earlier, most of children who do not live with two parents live with their mother and have a nonresident father.
Economic Needs of Children and the Nonresident Father 's Contributions of Child Support.
In 1992, 10 million women were eligible for child support. From this we can also observe that some of these women are mothers had a child whose father was living elsewhere. About half of eligible mothers were legally due child support. Of these, about half got all of the support owed to them and one quarter did not get anything (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011). These figures show that more than 60% of women who had children whose father was living elsewhere did not get any support. Among those who did get support, the average yearly payment was bout $3,000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011).
Factors Associated With Paying Support
Several factors account for whether fathers pay child support.
Obviously, fathers’ ability to pay child support, including employment, income, and education, affect payments and compliance with child support orders.The degree to which a child support order is a burden also affects compliance rate. Noneconomic factors also affect whether fathers pay support and how much they pay. Fathers who live apart from their children may be reluctant to pay support because they do not trust the mother to spend it all on the children. (Sherwood,1992). Fathers’ failure to monitor how the resident mother spends child support money lowers payments. Compared to fathers who live with their children, nonresident fathers enjoy fewer of the benefits of being a father, which also discourages payments. The longer parents are separated, the less child support fathers pay and the less likely the nonresident father is to pay any child support. Finally, when payment is withheld from fathers’ earnings, compliance with child support orders is higher (Garfinkel & Klawitter, …show more content…
1990).
The Effectiveness of Child Support in Decreasing Poverty
Child support has a small effect on poverty, removing only about 1 of 20 single-mother families from poverty. One explanation is that child support would remove more families from poverty if the amount owed were collected. Another possibility is that the reforms are effective, but the child support caseload is increasingly made of cases in which child support is difficult to collect (Beller & Graham, 1993). Finally, child support will never be enough on its own to lift many single-mother families out of poverty, because in most cases the fathers associated with these poor mothers are poor themselves.
Can Fathers Afford Child Support?
My research suggests that there is a great deal of diversity among nonresident fathers. A consistent result across studies is that most nonresident fathers could afford to pay more child support than they are currently paying. Very few fathers fall into poverty because of the amount of child support they are paying, and few would fall into poverty even if they paid all that was due (Garfinkel & Oellerich, 1989).
Who Meets Children’s Economic Needs If Fathers Do Not?
Children’s loss of their father’s income is compensated for partly by the mother’s earnings and by AFDC (Aid to Families for Dependent Children). Use of AFDC is higher among never married mothers, especially those who give birth when they are teen-agers. The largest share of a single mother’s income comes from her earnings. For a mother in a remarried family, the largest share of income comes from unearned income usually her husband’s earnings. In addition to husbands’ income, other kinds of transfers, such as support from grandparents, are included under unearned income. Maternal grandparents help meet the economic shortfall of children in single-mother households, often by sharing a household with the child and single mother (Bumpass & Raley, 1995).
Does It Matter for Children Who Provides for Their Economic Needs?
Studies show a positive relationship between the child support that nonresident fathers pay and their children’s behavior and school achievement. Several of these studies also show that a dollar of child support has a greater effect on child outcomes than a dollar from other sources, such as earnings or AFDC. This is because child support payments may have a symbolic value to children, who see this as a sign their father cares about their well being. Fathers who pay child support spend more time with their children. The combination of these activities can restore confidence in children and aid their emotional adjustment. Plus, fathers who pay support regularly are able to get along better with the children’s mother. The nonappearance of conflict explain the higher amounts of child support, greater amount of contact with the children, and the children’s better adjustment in the family. The positive effect of child support payments carries on after taking into account the amount of time the child spends with the father and the amount of conflict between the parents. This preliminary evidence suggests that more universal and rigorous child support enforcement may enhance the well-being of children whose parents divorce (Bumpass & Raley, 1995).
Patterns of Contact of Nonresident Parents and Children
Children depend on adults to look after them and to provide emotional and material support.
When parents separate, their children go through the loss of one parent’s time and attention. Indirect forms of communication, such as mail and telephone do not make up for this small amount of contact (Furstenberg & Nord,1985). Fathers of children born outside of marriage are twice as likely to lose touch with their child as fathers who are separated from their child because of divorce. About 30% of fathers who see their children spend significant portions of time with them. From the child’s point of view, even those who have little contact with their nonresident parent view their relationship as close (Maccoby, 1993). Nonresident fathers who stay involved with their children generally pursue recreational activities together rather than instrumental activities, such as doing homework
together.
Contact and Children’s Well-Being: The Role of Conflict with Parents
Many fathers and children want to maintain contact after separation. Many mothers prefer that their child’s father be more involved with the child. What matters for children’s well-being is what happens during that contact, and how much conflict occurs between parents. When conflict is high, contact is connected with behavior problems in children. When conflict is controlled so that children are not exposed to it, they appear to benefit from contact with the nonresident father (Amato & Rezac, 1994)
Conflict also has an indirect effect on a child’s well-being. Conflict diminishes the mother’s and father’s ability to provide stable and secure child-rearing practices, and hurts the quality of the parent-child relationship. Parents who are preoccupied with their own needs may have a struggle meeting the needs of their children, especially when parents are experiencing the distress of a break-up. Money and child-rearing are main causes of disagreement among married parents and it is not a shocker that these may be more difficult for divorced parents to resolve. Separated parents already have a history of conflict and are now facing role responsibilities. They respond to the challenges of child rearing by staying either in sensible agreement or in hostility or, they may disengage from each other and manage their child rearing in parallel households (Furstenberg & Nord, 1985).
Child support reforms, including paternity establishment and more universal enforcement of child support orders, are likely to increase the proportion of children who have contact with conflicted parents. These reforms require parents to be involved who, in other circumstances, would choose not to be involved because they do not get along. Pushing these families together may improve children’s economic welfare while it threatens their social and emotional development by exposing them to extreme levels of conflict. The threat to children’s welfare is more severe if the reforms increase contact with abusive parents. Children who are involved in their parents’ disagreements are more likely to be depressed and behave in a nonstandard manner, compared to children who are not involved in their parents’ unfriendly relationship. The effects of the reforms in the Family Support Act depend on how parents manage their conflict with each other.
Social/Emotional Security and Father Substitutes
Stepfathers and other adults may compensate, in part, for children’s loss of the nonresident father’s time and attention. Compared to biological or adoptive fathers who live with their children, stepfathers are less socially and emotionally engaged with their stepchildren. A good relationship with a stepfather enhances a child’s emotional, social, and academic achievement. Obtaining a stepparent does not reduce the chance that a child will drop out of school or become a teen parent. Children’s contact with nonresident fathers declines when mothers remarry (Seltzer & Bianchi, 1988). The strains of acquiring a stepfather at the same time that they lose ties with their original father may also threaten children’s emotional welfare.
Child Support Policy and Children’s Families
Biological fathers’ connections to their children depend greatly on the men’s relationship with the children’s mother. When parents are married or living together, biological fathers devote their time and financial resources to the children; when parents divorce or a non-marital relationship breaks up, fathers disengage from both the mother and their children.
Federal and state reforms are trying to fortify men’s ties to their children both their legal and social rights to children through access and custody. They are also trying to fortify financial ties to children through child support orders and better enforcement of those orders. The preliminary evidence suggests that these reforms will help children’s economic welfare. The reforms may also improve children’s social and emotional well-being as long as the changes do not increase children’s contact with highly conflicted parents or as long as these parents manage their conflict in a way that protects their children.
Parent education offers the prospective help to parents. Parents who no longer get along as spouses or lovers may be able to learn to get along as parents (Kelly, 1994; Pearson, 1993). Parents cannot have a clean break when their relationship takes a down turn because they still share a common resource called children. In most cases, however, parents have the potential to work together cooperatively to manage their volatile situations and to meet the children’s needs. When parents continue a high level of conflict and are unable to work together, their children suffer (Johnston, 1994).
Summary
Although this paper has focused on parents’ responsibilities, it is important to be aware that child support restructuring unaided cannot do everything. Some fathers are unable to pay more support because they do not have stable income. Child poverty will continue even in a system of perfect child support enforcement (Sorensen & Clark, 1994). Plus, some parents need help in learning how to handle the difficulties of the grueling responsibilities they face. Government can play a role in helping parents meet their responsibilities to children by acknowledging both children’s economic and noneconomic needs.
References
Amato, P. R., & Rezac, S. J. (1994). Contact with nonresident parents, inter-parental conflict, and children’s behavior. Journal of Family Issues, 15(2), 191–207.
Bane, M. J. (1976). Marital disruption and the lives of children. Journal of Social Issues,32, 103–117.
Beller, A. H., & Graham, J. W. (1993). Small change: The economics of child support.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Bianchi, S. M., & McArthur, E. (1991). Family disruption and economic hardship: The short-run picture for children. U.S. Bureau of Census, Curr. Popul. Rep. Ser. P-70, No. 23. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Bumpass, L. L., & Sweet, J. A. (1989). Children’s experience in single-parent families:Implications of cohabitation and marital transitions. Family Planning Perspectives,
21, 256–60.
Del Boca, D., & Flinn, C. J. (1994). Expenditure decisions of divorced mothers and income composition. The Journal of Human Resources.
Furstenberg, F. F., Jr., Morgan, S. P., & Allison, P. D. (1987). Paternal participation and children’s well-being. American Sociological Review, 52, 695–701.
Garfinkel, I., & Klawitter, M. M. (1990). The effect of routine income withholding of child support collections. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 9(2),155–177.
Seltzer, J. A. (1991b). Relationships between fathers and children who live apart: The father’s role after separation. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, 79–101.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2011). Marital status and living arrangements: March 2011. Current Population Reports, Series P-20-478. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2011). Child support for custodial mothers and fathers:2011. Current Population Reports, Series P60-187. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Angelica L Fleming
Virginia College Abstract
Child support reform is an issue of central importance to many families today. This paper concentrates on how parents who live apart from their children divide the responsibility for taking care of them and the economic and noneconomic effects of these arrangements on the children. The report centers on the causes and effects of child support. My intent is to provide an overview of the many studies on child support, custody, and visitation. I present information needed to help evaluate in a broad method, the effects of child support on children, their mothers, and their fathers. The effects of child support are sometimes different for children than …show more content…
for their parents, and sometimes different for mothers than for fathers. Any decision about child support policy requires complementing the competing interests of children, mothers, fathers, and the state. Children are the weakest among those with competing interests, so therefore they are the central focus of this report. I put emphasis on their economic needs because these needs inspire recent child support reforms. Plus, financial tension affects the emotional environment of families and parents’ capability to care for children.
Table of Contents
Demographic Change and Child Support
Family Support Act of 1988
Children’s Living Arrangements
Legal Parenthood and Joint Legal Custody
Paternity
Attaining New Parents
Children’s Economic Needs and Economic Disadvantages of Children Who Live Away From a Parent
Economic Resources and Children’s Needs
Economic Needs of Children and the Nonresident Father 's Contributions of Child Support
Factors Associated With Paying Support
The Effectiveness of Child Support in Decreasing Poverty
Can Fathers Afford Child Support?
Who Meets Children’s Economic Needs If Fathers Do Not?
Does It Matter for Children Who Provides for Their Economic Needs?
Patterns of Contact of Nonresident Parents and Children
Contact and Children’s Well-Being: The Role of Conflict with Parents
Social/Emotional Security and Father Substitutes
Child Support Policy and Children’s Families
Summary
Child Support and Children’s Well-Being
Demographic Change and Child Support
There are over 1/4 of children living in a household maintained by one parent (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011). Almost all of these children live with one parent because they were born outside of marriage or because their parents are separated or divorced. Since the middle of the century, most children who lived in a single-parent household did this because they had lost a parent through death (Bane, 1976). This demographic change is important for legislators because many programs that help poor children in single-parent households were initially intended to help widowed mothers. Today, most children in single-parent households have another parent living somewhere who may have the ability to help pay for their living expenses.
Family Support Act of 1988
The Family Support Act of 1988 situates the legal stage for considering matters of child support and the effects of child support. This act is one of the most recent in a series of federal laws over about 20 years created to strengthen child support enforcement. The Family Support Act of 1988 has two major purposes: (a) to improve the system for administering private child support transfers between parents to help support their children, and (b) to establish work programs and work provisions for parents who participate in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which is the public support or welfare system for children (Garfinkel, 1992).
The Family Support Act of 1988 has three main and very important stipulations regarding child support orders. The first piece requires states to strengthen paternity establishment for children born outside of marriage. Paternity establishment is important because it identifies a child’s legal parents. This is the first step in determining who is responsible for taking care of the child. The second piece commands consistent guidelines within states for child support orders. The third piece requires cases that go through the Office of Child Support Enforcement to be reviewed every 3 years. Child support orders may be increased if the nonresident parent’s income increases and decreased if income decreases. Another major part of the Family Support Act of 1988 addresses child support collection. Child support payments may be withheld from the nonresident parent’s earnings, in the same way that income tax is withheld, as a way of routinely collecting the child support obligation. This requirement went into effect in 1990 for cases in the Office of Child Support Enforcement, and in 1994 for all new cases. (Garfinkel, 1992)
Where and with children live specify what their physical environment is like and the resources that they have straight access to. Co-residence gives parents opportunities for more cherished interactions and the adult supervision which is necessary for successful socialization of children. The majority, 87%, of children who live with a single parent live with their mother (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011). Some evidence indicates that children who relocate more often have more adjustment problems, but it remains unclear whether the moving causes the adjustment problems or whether the child’s living arrangement is changed because the child is having problems. Studies that look at both children whose parents are divorced and children whose parents are not divorced show that frequent moving causes problems in school.
Legal Parenthood and Joint Legal Custody
After divorce or separation, parents negotiate legal custody. Legal custody creates the formal right to make decisions about major aspects of the child’s life. The most common exception is when parents have joint legal custody and the children live most of the time with the mother. The quality of the parents’ relationship with each other and the parents’ involvement with the children before the divorce, may also explain why families with joint legal custody have higher levels of involvement by both parents after separation. Men that took a dynamic role in taking care of children before a divorce would be likely to do so afterward as well (Miller,1993).
Paternity
The legal responsibilities for children born outside of marriage are organized differently than for children of divorce. State laws assume that for children born in marriage, the child’s legal father is the mother’s husband. The case for children born outside of marriage, the child’s father may be easy to recognize socially, but this is not the same as legally identifying the father. One reason that the Family Support Act of 1988 emphasized paternity establishment is that there is room for improvement on this aspect of child support enforcement.
Attaining New Parents
After their parents separate children may acquire new family members. While the noneconomic effects of remarriage vary, acquiring a stepparent, especially a stepfather, enhances the economic resources available to children. This reduces the economic disadvantage of living in a single-parent household. Grandparents may also help provide children’s needs. Living with a grandparent is more common for children born outside of marriage than for children whose parents are divorced (Bumpass & Raley, 1995).
Children’s Economic Needs and
Economic Disadvantages of Children Who Live Away From a Parent
It is difficult for a child to be happy without nutritious food, warm clothes, and a safe place to live. For children whose parents lived together before separation, family income declines by about one third when the father leaves the household (Bianchi & McArthur, 1991). Losing the father’s income is not the only economic disadvantage these children face. In addition, parents who separate or divorce have lower incomes even before separation than parents who stay together. Once parents separate, they bear the costs of maintaining two households instead of one. Children born to unmarried parents suffer even more severe economic disadvantages. Financial problems may affect children indirectly by creating stress and anxiety and reducing mothers’ emotional welfare. Mothers’ emotional adjustment affects child rearing practices and may reduce the quality of parent-child relationships.
Economic Resources and Children’s Needs
Children who live with a single mother rely solely on her earnings to meet their needs. Single mothers earn very much less than do married fathers because single mothers have more child care responsibilities, less training and education, and more disadvantages in the labor market (Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986). The main focus is on nonresident fathers instead of nonresident mothers because, as noted earlier, most of children who do not live with two parents live with their mother and have a nonresident father.
Economic Needs of Children and the Nonresident Father 's Contributions of Child Support.
In 1992, 10 million women were eligible for child support. From this we can also observe that some of these women are mothers had a child whose father was living elsewhere. About half of eligible mothers were legally due child support. Of these, about half got all of the support owed to them and one quarter did not get anything (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011). These figures show that more than 60% of women who had children whose father was living elsewhere did not get any support. Among those who did get support, the average yearly payment was bout $3,000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011).
Factors Associated With Paying Support
Several factors account for whether fathers pay child support.
Obviously, fathers’ ability to pay child support, including employment, income, and education, affect payments and compliance with child support orders.The degree to which a child support order is a burden also affects compliance rate. Noneconomic factors also affect whether fathers pay support and how much they pay. Fathers who live apart from their children may be reluctant to pay support because they do not trust the mother to spend it all on the children. (Sherwood,1992). Fathers’ failure to monitor how the resident mother spends child support money lowers payments. Compared to fathers who live with their children, nonresident fathers enjoy fewer of the benefits of being a father, which also discourages payments. The longer parents are separated, the less child support fathers pay and the less likely the nonresident father is to pay any child support. Finally, when payment is withheld from fathers’ earnings, compliance with child support orders is higher (Garfinkel & Klawitter, …show more content…
1990).
The Effectiveness of Child Support in Decreasing Poverty
Child support has a small effect on poverty, removing only about 1 of 20 single-mother families from poverty. One explanation is that child support would remove more families from poverty if the amount owed were collected. Another possibility is that the reforms are effective, but the child support caseload is increasingly made of cases in which child support is difficult to collect (Beller & Graham, 1993). Finally, child support will never be enough on its own to lift many single-mother families out of poverty, because in most cases the fathers associated with these poor mothers are poor themselves.
Can Fathers Afford Child Support?
My research suggests that there is a great deal of diversity among nonresident fathers. A consistent result across studies is that most nonresident fathers could afford to pay more child support than they are currently paying. Very few fathers fall into poverty because of the amount of child support they are paying, and few would fall into poverty even if they paid all that was due (Garfinkel & Oellerich, 1989).
Who Meets Children’s Economic Needs If Fathers Do Not?
Children’s loss of their father’s income is compensated for partly by the mother’s earnings and by AFDC (Aid to Families for Dependent Children). Use of AFDC is higher among never married mothers, especially those who give birth when they are teen-agers. The largest share of a single mother’s income comes from her earnings. For a mother in a remarried family, the largest share of income comes from unearned income usually her husband’s earnings. In addition to husbands’ income, other kinds of transfers, such as support from grandparents, are included under unearned income. Maternal grandparents help meet the economic shortfall of children in single-mother households, often by sharing a household with the child and single mother (Bumpass & Raley, 1995).
Does It Matter for Children Who Provides for Their Economic Needs?
Studies show a positive relationship between the child support that nonresident fathers pay and their children’s behavior and school achievement. Several of these studies also show that a dollar of child support has a greater effect on child outcomes than a dollar from other sources, such as earnings or AFDC. This is because child support payments may have a symbolic value to children, who see this as a sign their father cares about their well being. Fathers who pay child support spend more time with their children. The combination of these activities can restore confidence in children and aid their emotional adjustment. Plus, fathers who pay support regularly are able to get along better with the children’s mother. The nonappearance of conflict explain the higher amounts of child support, greater amount of contact with the children, and the children’s better adjustment in the family. The positive effect of child support payments carries on after taking into account the amount of time the child spends with the father and the amount of conflict between the parents. This preliminary evidence suggests that more universal and rigorous child support enforcement may enhance the well-being of children whose parents divorce (Bumpass & Raley, 1995).
Patterns of Contact of Nonresident Parents and Children
Children depend on adults to look after them and to provide emotional and material support.
When parents separate, their children go through the loss of one parent’s time and attention. Indirect forms of communication, such as mail and telephone do not make up for this small amount of contact (Furstenberg & Nord,1985). Fathers of children born outside of marriage are twice as likely to lose touch with their child as fathers who are separated from their child because of divorce. About 30% of fathers who see their children spend significant portions of time with them. From the child’s point of view, even those who have little contact with their nonresident parent view their relationship as close (Maccoby, 1993). Nonresident fathers who stay involved with their children generally pursue recreational activities together rather than instrumental activities, such as doing homework
together.
Contact and Children’s Well-Being: The Role of Conflict with Parents
Many fathers and children want to maintain contact after separation. Many mothers prefer that their child’s father be more involved with the child. What matters for children’s well-being is what happens during that contact, and how much conflict occurs between parents. When conflict is high, contact is connected with behavior problems in children. When conflict is controlled so that children are not exposed to it, they appear to benefit from contact with the nonresident father (Amato & Rezac, 1994)
Conflict also has an indirect effect on a child’s well-being. Conflict diminishes the mother’s and father’s ability to provide stable and secure child-rearing practices, and hurts the quality of the parent-child relationship. Parents who are preoccupied with their own needs may have a struggle meeting the needs of their children, especially when parents are experiencing the distress of a break-up. Money and child-rearing are main causes of disagreement among married parents and it is not a shocker that these may be more difficult for divorced parents to resolve. Separated parents already have a history of conflict and are now facing role responsibilities. They respond to the challenges of child rearing by staying either in sensible agreement or in hostility or, they may disengage from each other and manage their child rearing in parallel households (Furstenberg & Nord, 1985).
Child support reforms, including paternity establishment and more universal enforcement of child support orders, are likely to increase the proportion of children who have contact with conflicted parents. These reforms require parents to be involved who, in other circumstances, would choose not to be involved because they do not get along. Pushing these families together may improve children’s economic welfare while it threatens their social and emotional development by exposing them to extreme levels of conflict. The threat to children’s welfare is more severe if the reforms increase contact with abusive parents. Children who are involved in their parents’ disagreements are more likely to be depressed and behave in a nonstandard manner, compared to children who are not involved in their parents’ unfriendly relationship. The effects of the reforms in the Family Support Act depend on how parents manage their conflict with each other.
Social/Emotional Security and Father Substitutes
Stepfathers and other adults may compensate, in part, for children’s loss of the nonresident father’s time and attention. Compared to biological or adoptive fathers who live with their children, stepfathers are less socially and emotionally engaged with their stepchildren. A good relationship with a stepfather enhances a child’s emotional, social, and academic achievement. Obtaining a stepparent does not reduce the chance that a child will drop out of school or become a teen parent. Children’s contact with nonresident fathers declines when mothers remarry (Seltzer & Bianchi, 1988). The strains of acquiring a stepfather at the same time that they lose ties with their original father may also threaten children’s emotional welfare.
Child Support Policy and Children’s Families
Biological fathers’ connections to their children depend greatly on the men’s relationship with the children’s mother. When parents are married or living together, biological fathers devote their time and financial resources to the children; when parents divorce or a non-marital relationship breaks up, fathers disengage from both the mother and their children.
Federal and state reforms are trying to fortify men’s ties to their children both their legal and social rights to children through access and custody. They are also trying to fortify financial ties to children through child support orders and better enforcement of those orders. The preliminary evidence suggests that these reforms will help children’s economic welfare. The reforms may also improve children’s social and emotional well-being as long as the changes do not increase children’s contact with highly conflicted parents or as long as these parents manage their conflict in a way that protects their children.
Parent education offers the prospective help to parents. Parents who no longer get along as spouses or lovers may be able to learn to get along as parents (Kelly, 1994; Pearson, 1993). Parents cannot have a clean break when their relationship takes a down turn because they still share a common resource called children. In most cases, however, parents have the potential to work together cooperatively to manage their volatile situations and to meet the children’s needs. When parents continue a high level of conflict and are unable to work together, their children suffer (Johnston, 1994).
Summary
Although this paper has focused on parents’ responsibilities, it is important to be aware that child support restructuring unaided cannot do everything. Some fathers are unable to pay more support because they do not have stable income. Child poverty will continue even in a system of perfect child support enforcement (Sorensen & Clark, 1994). Plus, some parents need help in learning how to handle the difficulties of the grueling responsibilities they face. Government can play a role in helping parents meet their responsibilities to children by acknowledging both children’s economic and noneconomic needs.
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