This is the first report of a unique demonstration project aimed at improving the resources available to poor children. The Parents' Fair Share Demonstration (PFS), authorized by the Family Support Act of 1988, represents a promising approach to reducing poverty among children in families receiving welfare through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. At a time when the contributions of two wage-earners are increasingly necessary to provide a decent standard of living for families, Parents' Fair Share targets the "other half" of the parental earning capacity in AFDC households — the noncustodial parents, usually fathers. The goal of Parents' Fair Share is to boost the income potential of welfare families by increasing the earnings of noncustodial parents and ensuring that those earnings are converted into regular child support payments.
There are many unanswered questions about child support: who pays and who does not; the extent to which joblessness and unstable work patterns are barriers to regular child support; why some noncustodial parents with good intentions do not pay; what public policies and programs might induce more noncustodial parents to assume responsibility for their children's financial support. Parents' Fair Share is designed to expand our knowledge in these areas, as well as to learn whether its particular combination of services and incentives makes a difference for poor children. This report lays a foundation for that knowledge. The opinions expressed by the parents who participated in these interviews, and the circumstances of their lives, helped inform the early stages of the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration and bring to life the challenges ahead.
Judith M. Gueron
President
MDRC
The authors are indebted to a number of people who helped arrange and conduct the interviews that make up this report. In New York City, Richard Curtis and Donnie Thompson helped recruit participants for the Queens and Brownsville focus groups, respectively, which were conducted by Mercer Sullivan, a Senior Research Associate at the Community Development Research Center of the New School for Social Research in New York City and author of the section of the report entitled "Noncustodial Fathers' Attitudes and Behaviors."
Terry Williams, Associate Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research, also made significant contributions to the New York City portion of the report. He recruited the participants and conducted the focus group interviews in Harlem, analyzed the results, and shared his expertise in using this method of data-gathering.
Alisa Belzer assisted in conducting the Baltimore interview with young mothers, which was led by Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., author of the section entitled "Daddies and Fathers: Men Who Do for Their Children and Men Who Don't" and the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
In Grand Rapids, William Camden, Kent County Friend of the Court, and Tom Spaak and Sis Warner at the Wyoming Community Education Program, arranged for the interviews conducted by Fred Doolittle and written about by Kay Sherwood, who is Director of Special Projects at MDRC; she authored the section called "Child Support Obligations: What Fathers Say About Paying," as well as the report's Introduction and Conclusion.
At MDRC, Gordon Berlin played a major role in the development and completion of the report. He conceived the project, brought the authors together, and provided consistently helpful suggestions from the earliest stages to the final manuscript. Judith Gueron, Rob Ivry, Fred Doolittle, and Milton Little also offered insightful comments.
Also essential to this examination of parents' views was the support provided by the partners in the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration; they include the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the AT&T Foundation.
The authors appreciate, above all, the candor and cooperation of the 71 parents who participated in the interviews. Without them, we would understand much less. We hope that the report gives readers a sense of the parents' lives, which we were privileged to enter, however briefly. We also hope that their struggles and accomplishments provide clues to how public policy and programs can improve conditions for poor families.
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Last updated: 03/26/01