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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.
This report documents key socio-economic impacts families of incarcerated persons. This resource also follows research on the socio-economic status of those who are incarcerated. The goal of the report is to continue to contribute to growing research and resources that benefit those experiencing incarceration and their families as well as organizations that work with them.
Over the years, the Center for Family Policy and Practice has consistently reached out to and worked with domestic violence advocates and listened to low-income women of color who are victims and survivors. Their knowledge and experience have helped guide and inform our work since the agency was founded in 1995.
Our work focuses on low-income communities and individuals who experience poverty as a chronic condition in their lives. This paper addresses the complex needs that domestic violence victims who live in impoverished communities often face, not the economic deprivation that…
Most state child support agencies have responded to the increases in teen and nonmarital births with the traditional offer of paternity establishment and child support enforcement services after the birth of the child. The Child Support Division of the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has taken the innovative step of developing a number of educational and outreach efforts that reach youth and young adults before a pregnancy occurs.The leading example of the OAG’s efforts is the Parenting and Paternity Awareness (p.a.p.a.)Curriculum; p.a.p.a. is a school-based curriculum that sends a…
The vast majority of individuals who are in U.S. jails and prisons will eventually return to the community. Criminal justice policymakers and practitioners everywhere have made it a priority to ensure these individuals, returning in large numbers each year, do not commit new crimes following their release. As part of these efforts, state and local government officials have focused on the need for people released from prison and jail to have jobs, seeing employment as critical to successful reentry. Indeed, incarcerated individuals that have been asked about their post-release plans…
Being a father in this era of changing family structures and converging gender roles means more than bringing home a paycheck or delivering punishment to a misbehaving child. A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that Americans expect dad to be more of a moral teacher and emotional comforter than a breadwinner or disciplinarian. About six-in-ten Americans (58%) say it is "extremely important" for a father to provide values and morals to his children, the top ranked paternal role of the four tested in the survey. Roughly half say it is extremely important for a dad to provide emotional…
In our discussion, we review and synthesize research evidence on five identified domains of instability that have been well established in the literature: family income, parental employment, family structure, housing, and the out-of-home contexts of school and child care. In our review of the evidence, we also discuss some of the key pathways through which instability may affect development. Specifically, research points to the underlying role of parenting, parental mental health, and the home environment in providing the stability and support young children need for positive development. We…
The Children's Mental Health eReview addresses the gap between what we know from the literature and what we experience working with children and families. Each issue explores a specific topic area and reflects the expertise of a group of people working in diverse research and practice settings. This issue examines the needs of children with incarcerated parents. The contributing authors reflect expertise with a variety of populations, settings and cultures. They represent some of the many people working in creative, collaborative ways to better understand and serve children of incarcerated…
This report represents the results of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's effort to learn what tools local service providers need to help their clients increase their financial capabilities. Through the field scan they contacted fourteen organizations that provide financial empowerment training to their case managers and frontline staff. They learned how programs have succeeded -- or struggled -- in providing training, tools, and resources to change case manager and client behavior. They conducted in-depth interviews of five organizations that represented diverse approaches to…
According to this paper, the parenting gap is a big factor in the opportunity gap. The chances of upward social mobility are lower for children with parents struggling to do a good job -- in terms of creating a supportive and stimulating home environment. Children lucky enough to have strong parents are more likely to succeed at all the critical life stages, which means policies to help weaker parents do a better job can be investments in opportunity, and equality. Key findings indicate: 1) The quality of U.S. parenting, as measured on the HOME scale, strongly varies by income, family…
