On August 22, 1996, President William Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Media and goververnment sources portrayed this act as the most important welfare reform since the passage of Social Security in the New Deal 61 years earlier. The hype around welfare reform overshadowed a significant section of the act entitled, “Title III—Child Support.” This section of the act made major changes in the child support program that is charged with the task of establishing, enforcing and modifying child support orders for children with non-residential parents. This book tells the story of the development and passage of the 1996 child support reforms.

This book showcases existing problems within the African-American community that are exacerbated by its over-reliance on a very flawed child support system. Bestselling author and social critic Demico Boothe shares his personal story of being wrongfully convicted of a crime, being sent to federal prison, and coming out of prison only to have to immediately deal with a hostile child support system that seemed intent on sending him back to prison over money he didn't have. Boothe shares how the current child support system poorly served him and his family and identifies and analyzes many areas within the system that need fixing. Boothe identifies racism, emotionalism, anti-male feminism, and profit motive as the main driving forces of the U.S. child support system, not the bettering of the welfare of children. Upon finding that unemployed and underemployed black fathers are disproportionately the recipients of the worst punitive actions that the system has to offer due to economic and racial reasons, Boothe decided to pen a book about it, hoping to shed some much-needed light on this issue. Important facts and in-book points of discussion about the U.S. Child Support System and the black family: Over 115 billion dollars is currently owed to the government in back child support and associated fees, mostly by poor black fathers The U.S. Child Support System began formation in the early 1800's and was originally designated for white women only, and has since only been updated to incorporate more punitive enforcement actions that are now levied disproportionately against poor black fathers The Child Support System has been instrumental in the much-talked-about breakdown and dwindling of the two-parent black family household since the late 1970's The Child Support System prioritizes payments over parentage when it comes to fathers, while nearly 70% of all black children in the U.S. are raised in households headed by single women The U.S. Child Support System actively serves as a form of probationary surveillance on poor fathers The U.S. Child Support System is openly anti-family and anti-male The American Feminist Movement - which started in the early 1800's as a white-women-only movement that sought to create more economic parity and equity between white men and women - is largely responsible for the anti-male slant within the U.S. Child Support System The U.S. Child Support System helped create the false "Deadbeat Dad" stereotype that the mainstream media often only relegates to black men The U.S. Child Support System helped create the "Bitter Baby Mama" syndrome in the black community Federal and state governments reap multilevel economic profits via the U.S. Child Support System

"This important and highly informative collection of studies on nonresidentfathers and child support should be of great value to scholars and policymakers alike." —American Journal of Sociology Over half of America's children will live apart from their fathers at some point as they grow up, many in the single-mother households that increasingly make up the nation's poor. Federal efforts to improve the collection of child support from fathers appear to have little effect on payments, and many critics have argued that forcing fathers to pay does more harm than good. Much of the uncertainty surrounding child support policies has stemmed from a lack of hard data on nonresident fathers. Fathers Under Fire presents the best available information on the financial and social circumstances of the men who are at the center of the debate. In this volume, social scientists and legal scholars explore the issues underlying the child support debate, chief among them on the potential repercussions of stronger enforcement. Who are nonresident fathers? This volume calls upon both empirical and theoretical data to describe them across a broad economic and social spectrum. Absentee fathers who do not pay child support are much more likely to be school dropouts and low earners than fathers who pay, and nonresident fathers altogether earn less than resident fathers. Fathers who start new families are not significantly less likely to support previous children. But can we predict what would happen if the government were to impose more rigorous child support laws? The data in this volume offer a clearer understanding of the potential benefits and risks of such policies. In contrast to some fears, stronger enforcement is unlikely to push fathers toward. But it does seem to have more of an effect on whether some fathers remarry and become responsible for new families. In these cases, how are subsequent children affected by a father's pre-existing obligations? Should such fathers be allowed to reduce their child support orders in order to provide for their current families? Should child support guidelines permit modifications in the event of a father's changed financial circumstances? Should government enforce a father's right to see his children as well as his obligation to pay support? What can be done to help under- or unemployed fathers meet their payments? This volume provides the information and insight to answer these questions. The need to help children and reduce the public costs of welfare programs is clear, but the process of achieving these goals is more complex. Fathers Under Fire offers an indispensable resource to those searching for effective and equitable solutions to the problems of child support.

"Gathers in one place annotations of all the major legal literature on child support issues published since 1975." Intended primarily for those in research, policy development, legislation, and litigation. Includes miscellaneous literature, e.g., books, journal articles, and laws. Topical arrangement. Appendixes consist of lists of federal legislative materials and titles available through the National Child Support Enforcement Center. No index.

When the U.S. child support collection system was set up in 1975 under President Gerald Ford -- a child of divorce whose father failed to pay court-ordered child support -- the country, and the typical family, looked very different from today. Important facts and in-book points of discussion: -Over 115 billion dollars is currently owed to the government in back child support and associated fees, mostly by poor black fathers. -The U.S. Child Support System began formation in the early 1800's and was originally designated for white women only, and has since only been updated to incorporate more punitive enforcement actions that are now levied disproportionately against poor black fathers. -The Child Support System has been instrumental in the much-talked-about breakdown and dwindling of the two-parent black family household since the late 1970's. -The Child Support System prioritizes payments over parentage when it comes to fathers, while nearly 70% of all black children in the U.S. are raised in households headed by single women. - Federal and state governments reap multilevel economic profits via the U.S. Child Support System. - And much more!

Political observers have long since struggled with understanding how new ideas are placed on the public agenda. In their studies, most social scientists have relied on biographical sketches and intensive case studies to explore the intricacies of innovation. Researchers have had much more difficulty, however, in moving from these individual success stories to more generalizable theories of entrepreneurship. This book builds such a theory by focusing on the critical issue of child support enforcement in the United States. Covering over a 100 year period, this book tracks the evolution of multiple sets of political entrepreneurs as they grapple with the child support problem: charity workers with local law enforcement in the nineteenth century, social workers throughout the 1960s, conservatives during the 1970s, women's groups and women legislators in the 1980s, and fathers' rights groups in the 1990s and beyond.

This insightful and original book is the first to examine the relationship between families and the state in the United States, both in theory and in practice, using child support policy as a lens of analysis. Josephson cogently presents the origins, evolution, and organization of federal child support programs and persuasively demonstrates how some child support enforcement policies, rather than increasing women's access to economic resources, expand government and social control over the beneficiaries. Drawing on the literature of both feminist political theory and public policy implementation, Josephson analyzes the impact of family law and social welfare policies through several empirical case studies. This is important reading for anyone interested in political theory, public policy, and women's relationship to the state.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.