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While startling similarities emerged from the interviews conducted in New York City, Baltimore, and Grand Rapids — especially overwhelming support for the idea of fathers as providers and nurturers — the differences among fathers are very important to the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration. Frank Furstenberg pointed out how persistent and responsible Arnold and Ricky had been compared to Jordon and Lionnel, who walked away from their parental roles, even though all the young men came from the same neighborhood and same difficult economic circumstances. In Grand Rapids, John D., a young man $600 in arrears on his child support, badly wanted a chance to work and reduce this debt in any way he could, including through community service, while Rick J., who was 37 years old with one of his children grown and an arrearage of $14,000, doubted that any improvements in the system could affect him. Some of the men who were interviewed would probably continue to try to evade the child support system, and some would take advantage of any opportunities offered by a program like Parents' Fair Share. Although the interviewers did not gather concrete data on job histories and skills, it was also clear that some of the fathers could work at a "family-supporting" wage, while others lacked skills and still others lacked the discipline or interest in sticking with a demanding job.
Parents' Fair Share is a multi-faceted intervention that has the potential to respond to noncustodial parents in widely varying circumstances. On the employment side, Parents' Fair Share programs will offer services to upgrade the education and job skills of some participants, and to help others find jobs. On the child support enforcement side, there will be varied responses as well. Procedures will be introduced so that unemployed noncustodial parents who cooperate with the program can have their child support obligations quickly modified to fit their circumstances, enabling them to avoid the accumulation of debt that discourages many from trying to improve their skills and seems to drive some "underground" altogether. But enforcement may be intensified for those who do not cooperate: The special attention given to the Parents' Fair Share caseload in child support programs will, in some cases, speed up the law enforcement process for those who fail to pay according to a legal child support order. The central question for the Parents' Fair Share test is whether, when job training opportunities are added to the enforcement of child support obligations, noncustodial parents work more and pay more child support.
The interviews also make it clear that getting and holding jobs is only one piece of the child support puzzle. To succeed, Parents' Fair Share will have to do more than help unemployed noncustodial parents go to work, the interviews suggest. The deep feelings of love for their children that most of the fathers professed frequently do not translate into financial support; even men who believe in providing for their children do not always come through with money regularly. The reasons they give, and the circumstances they describe, have different details but common themes: (1) Things are temporary — jobs, housing situations, and relationships — even though the fathers often long for stability and permanence in their lives. (2) Men without jobs and money are powerless, especially compared to women, who control children and relationships, and compared to the people and institutions that make and carry out the child support laws and determine who gets jobs. (3) They have too many obligations, often acquired in a state of suspended judgment and hope for permanence, and when they were very young. (4) They are hurt, disappointed, and angry, and they often handle these feelings in self-destructive ways.
The Parents' Fair Share model may begin to address some of the needs underlying these themes through mediation services designed to help noncustodial and custodial parents resolve conflicts and through peer support groups that deal with emotions of fatherhood and include parenting instruction. Parents' Fair Share participants will also be referred to community services for problems such as substance abuse. Neither mediation nor peer support can reverse the deep-seated gender mistrust discussed by Frank Furstenberg or the loneliness and seeming astonishment that some of the men feel when their women partners decide to end relationships. Neither can these services be expected to turn around the behavior of all the men who do not pay child support. There are bigger problems of individual and community models, messages and values, and lack of family-supporting jobs for people without college degrees -- than a program like Parents' Fair Share can solve alone.
But the combination of Parents' Fair Share services could improve the circumstances of enough families to make it worthwhile. If Parents' Fair Share can provide training to help men like John D. in Grand Rapids move into occupations that offer them opportunities to earn more and advance, and the program freezes their child support debts while they invest in their futures, there is a chance that the children and mothers who now receive welfare will become independent of public assistance, especially if the mothers get their own job training through the welfare system. In other communities, if Parents' Fair Share succeeds in strengthening child support enforcement to collect from parents like Clark S., who would not pay at all if the system did not keep locating him and intercepting his income and wages through mandatory withholding, some children will have more resources. And if the fathers who want to work, want to pay support, but have differences with the mothers of their children, are helped to deal with these differences in ways that avoid damaging — and even sustain and strengthen — their relationships with their children, Parents' Fair share may succeed in another way.
The 71 parents who participated in the interviews reported on here also helped pinpoint a crucial change in the existing system for child support that Parents' Fair Share can address: providing accurate, understandable information to parents about child support rights and responsibilities. Very few of the fathers and mothers interviewed had the facts about procedures for establishing legal paternity, setting child support orders, or getting child support obligations modified when their circumstances change. Some did not understand the basic rules of the welfare system; and many would not have been able to explain how the welfare and child support rules interact. This is not surprising; the complexity of the welfare and child support rules often stymie even people who work in these bureaucracies. Nevertheless, if poor parents are expected to cooperate, participate, and respond to programs designed to help them fulfill their obligations, they have to be able to understand those obligations.
This series of interviews was not designed for quantitative data collection and, thus, many questions are left for the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration research, including questions about the prevalence of different employment and parenting situations among the noncustodial parents who will enroll, as well as about how the fathers and their children's mothers will respond to Parents' Fair Share. But there is one unexplored area of parents' attitudes and beliefs that stands out because it represents an important gap in our understanding of poor parents' views of child support. The fathers and mothers interviewed for this report were not asked directly how they think their children are faring, where the money comes from if noncustodial parents' do not contribute, or who (or what institution) is filling in. It is clear that some of the children are being cared for, and cared for adequately in many cases, in second families or extended families. But it also seems clear that some noncustodial parents do not know, or do not think about, this. To reduce child poverty, it may be critical to learn parents' views of this phenomenon during the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration.
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Last updated: 03/26/01