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A nonresident parent is a person 15 years or older who does not reside for most nights in the same household as one or more of his or her biological, adopted, or stepchildren under age 21. Research finds that many nonresident parents and their children are economically vulnerable, and government policies often have substantial impacts on their lives. This report reviews demographic, relationship, and economic characteristics of nonresident parents, with additional focus on the low-income subset of such parents. The report also presents data on nonresident parents’ child support payments.…

Fathers make important and unique contributions to positive child development. In spite of these findings, the research literature has lagged in the study of the role and impact of fathers on child development and in the development of effective approaches and interventions for fathers. Parameters for additional study include the inclusion of fathers in treatment outcome studies, the engagement of fathers within studies once included the retention of fathers in interventions and studies once engaged, and the appropriate measurement of father-related outcomes. A systematic review of 64…

Despite good reason to believe that children in foster care are disproportionately exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), relatively little research considers exposure to ACEs among this group of vulnerable children. In this article, we use data from the 2011–2012 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized children ages 0–17 in the United States, to estimate the association between foster care placement and exposure to an array of ACEs. In adjusted logistic regression models, we find that children placed in foster care…

Non-resident fathers’ compliance with child support agreements is low. An estimated 50% of fathers never pay any formal support to their co-parents (Stykes, Manning, & Brown, 2013). Responsible fatherhood programs have been developed as an alternative to incarceration to provide parenting and other skills to fathers in the hopes of increasing their payment compliance. This study adds to the sparse literature on the evaluation of responsible fatherhood programs by quantitatively examining the role of hope, parenting role salience, and parenting skills in predicting changes in child…

The central goal of child support policy must be child well-being. Child support policies designed to maximize child well-being can increase financial and other resources available to children, help remove barriers to consistent child support payment, increase employment retention among noncustodial fathers with support orders, support noncustodial parental engagement, and facilitate healthy co-parenting. Unprecedented levels of job loss, economic instability, and family isolation during the pandemic have raised the child support policy stakes for fathers, families, and communities.

This final report summarizes implementation and impacts of the Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) demonstration. The goals of the demonstration were to use insights from behavioral science to develop interventions that could improve child support services and increase parent engagement, and to encourage the rapid-cycle testing of these strategies, leading to further improvements. In the process, the project hoped to build the participating child support programs' capabilities in behavioral science and evaluation and support these and other child support programs in…

For parents who have court orders to pay child support, the financial outlook may be especially bleak due to COVID-19-related job loss compounded by enforcement of child support orders. If child support orders cannot be modified in a timely manner to reflect job loss, parents can quickly build child support debt and become subject to non-compliance penalties. Changes to current child support practices and policies can improve parents’ ability and willingness to pay support when they recover from the COVID-19 recession.

Most of the money many low-income Californians pay for child support does not reach their children; instead, it reimburses the government for public assistance their children have received. In California, 40 percent of child support payments are for debt owed to the government. What would happen if 100 percent of parents’ payments went to their children, rather than the government? What benefits would accrue to children and parents? The San Francisco child support debt relief pilot tested this possibility, and the results are clear. When parents’ public assistance debt is paid off, so 100…

All states have programs that give unmarried parents the opportunity to acknowledge the father’s paternity of the newborn at the hospital. States must also help parents acknowledge paternity up until the child’s eighteenth birthday through vital records offices or other offices designated by the state. Even if the parents plan to marry after their baby is born, establishing paternity helps to protect the relationship between the child and the father.

Successful reentry is one of the greatest challenges facing America today and, especially the future of our children. The greatest predictor of whether a child will wind up in prison is whether his parent(s)— namely, the father—was in prison. Despite the many daunting challenges that fathers face upon their release, connecting them with their children and family is perhaps the most strategic one to address because it breaks the generational nature of crime and incarceration.