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Journal Article The article presents a study conducted in the United States that examines variation in the effects of nonresident father involvement on child well being. The data for this analysis was taken from the child supplement to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). In addition to annual interviews with the respondents, data on the children of the NLSY women were collected in 1986 and 1988. The study focuses on children who we living in households with their mothers and had a father living elsewhere in 1988. The children who were assessed tend to be born to younger mothers, and this is…
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Journal Article Using data from the child supplement to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a series of multivariate regression models were tested to determine whether father visitation or the payment of child support are significantly associated with several measures of child wellbeing. The results indicate that there is limited evidence to support the hypothesis that nonresident father involvement has positive benefits for children. The strongest evidence is for the effect of child support in the domain of academics. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article The article discusses the answers on questions posed regarding public policy toward fathers with low income in the child support program. It states that the federal government must aim for additional funding to programs designed for the employment of low-income fathers in the child support programs that would increase employment and decrease poverty among low-earning fathers and their children. It notes that making programs mandatory and voluntary will be beneficial to low-earning fathers in the child support program. It mentions that said programs may include services like case management,…
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Journal Article We present new estimates of unwed fathers' ability to pay child support. Prior research relied on surveys that drastically undercounted nonresident unwed fathers and provided no link to their children who lived in separate households. To overcome these limitations, previous research assumed assortative mating and that each mother partnered with one father who was actually eligible to pay support and had no other child support obligations. Because the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study contains data on couples, multiple-partner fertility, and a rich array of other previously unmeasured…
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Journal Article Child support is a critical source of income, especially for the growing proportion of children born to unmarried mothers. Current social policy supports custodial parent employment (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit [EITC] and other work supports have largely taken the place of an entitlement to cash assistance for single mothers of young children). Given many single mothers' limited earnings potential, child support from noncustodial fathers is also important. This raises questions about the effects of child support on custodial mothers' labor supply, and whether policies that increase…
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Journal Article This qualitative study explores the views that low-income fathers and fatherhood service providers have of the child support system and how these perceptions shape the provision of and men's engagement in fatherhood services. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with 36 fathers, and telephone interviews with 19 fatherhood service providers. Four themes emerged about perceptions of the child support system: imposing unrealistic financial demands, criminalizing low-income men, discounting paternal viewpoints, and evidencing responsible parenting. A further four themes were…
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Journal Article Past child support research has largely focused on cash payments made through the courts (formal support) or given directly to the mother (informal support) almost to the exclusion of a third type: non-cash goods (in-kind support). Drawing on repeated, semistructured interviews with nearly 400 low-income noncustodial fathers, the authors found that in-kind support constitutes about one quarter of total support. Children in receipt of some in-kind support receive, on average, $60 per month worth of goods. Multilevel regression analyses demonstrated that children who are younger and have more…
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Journal Article Despite efforts to strengthen child support enforcement over the past decades, the level of unpaid child support remains high. High child support arrears create problems for families and states; however, our understanding of how arrears accumulate is limited. Using longitudinal data from Wisconsin administrative records for noncustodial fathers, this article examines patterns of the evolution of child support arrears. We develop a scheme to categorize long-term arrears changes and identify six typical trajectories of arrears evolution that distinguish the timing and pattern of changes in debt…
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Journal Article This study examines the relationships among nonresident fathers' financial support, informal instrumental support, mothers' parenting and parenting stress, and their children's behavioral and cognitive development in single-mother families with low income. Informed by stress-coping and social support models, this study estimates the mediating effects of nonresident fathers' financial support on children's outcomes transmitted through mothers' parenting and parenting stress. The analyses use the longitudinal data from a subsample of 679 single mothers in the Fragile Families and Child…
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Journal Article Although remarriage is a relatively common transition, little is known about how nonresident fathers affect divorced mothers' entry into remarriage. Using the 1979-2010 rounds of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979, the authors examined the likelihood of remarriage for divorced mothers (N = 882) by nonresident father contact with children and payment of child support. The findings suggest that maternal remarriage is positively associated with nonresident father contact but not related to receiving child support. (Author abstract)
