Too few poor children who live apart from their fathers can count on their financial support. In 1996, only 30 percent of poor children who lived apart from their dads received child support. That year, welfare reform addressed this hard fact, stepping up efforts to collect child support. But increased child support alone will not be enough; further support, economic incentives, and revised child support policies are needed to enable low-income noncustodial fathers to take financial responsibility for their children.
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Journal Article We employed meta-analytic methods to pool information from 63 studies dealing with nonresident fathers and children's well-being. Fathers' payment of child support was positively associated with measures of children's well-being. The frequency of contact with nonresident fathers was not related to child outcomes in general. Two additional dimensions of the father-child relationship--feelings of closeness and authoritative parenting--were positively associated with children's academic success and negatively associated with children's externalizing and internalizing problems. (Author abstract).
