Child Support

This book explores the history, reforms, and consequences of child support in America. The authors have included case studies as well as discussions on the psychological consequences of separating families, effects of divorce laws on the award of child support, contested paternity, and child custody alternatives. They conclude with a discussion on economic responsibility and the deadbeat epidemic. The book is intended to empower the larger number of parents who are caught in the midst of over-worked agencies, discouraging tales, and the lack of information that keeps them paralyzed from acting on their own behalf.

Examining the efforts of leaders in American child support, this book explores the topic of policy innovation over a 100-year period. It 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 19th century; social workers through the 1960s; conservatives during the 1970s; women's groups and women legislators in the 1980s; and fathers' rights groups in the 1990s and beyond. Jocelyn Elise Crowley employs methodological tools from both political science and economics to highlight key stages in the innovation process.

Care Work is a collection of original essays on the complexities of providing care. These essays emphasize how social policies intersect with gender, race, and class to alternately compel women to perform care work and to constrain their ability to do so. Leading international scholars from a range of disciplines provide a groundbreaking analysis of the work of caring in the context of the family, the market, and the welfare state.

This groundbreaking book examines in detail relations between the states and the roles of United States Congress and Supreme Court in determining the nature of such relations--a distinguishing characteristic of a federal system. The neglect of interstate relations by scholars is surprising in view of the long and ongoing struggle between state power and federal power in the U.S. This new text provides a comprehensive examination of interstate relations, with up-to-date information and analysis relative to interstate suits, full faith and credit, privileges and immunities, tax exportation by states, interstate business competition, and interstate trade barriers. In addition, the work proposes a new model for improving interstate relations in the U.S. This important text will be of interest to scholars and students in American government and politics, state government and politics, and intergovernmental relations.

This book brings together experts from diverse scientific disciplines who share an interest in the topic of father involvement. Unlike most books in the field, which tend to solely draw from a psychological perspective, this Handbook merges theories and research from the unique fields of psychology, economics, demography sociology, anthropology, and social policy. For the most part, research on fathering is motivated by concern for children's well-being. Social scientists share a core set of questions, including: *"Who are fathers?" *"What is father involvement and how does it affect children and families?" *"What are the determinants of father involvement?" *"How do cultural contexts shape fathers' roles in families?" This Handbook sheds light on how a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of fathering can advance knowledge about these fundamental questions. This integrative approach is fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of human development generally, and to fathering more specifically. At the core of this book are the goals of describing and understanding the nature, antecedents, and consequences of father involvement across biological status, family structure, culture, and stages in children's development--both within and across scientific boundaries. Each of the scientific disciplines represented offers unique methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of fathering and to the interpretation of behavioral patterns that characterize ecological systems that include--as well as extend beyond--family units. Together, the chapters offer provocative and challenging insight into the nature and meaning of fatherhood and father involvement by questioning longstanding assumptions about fathers' roles in the lives of families and children in current history.

Good Enough Mothering? provides accounts of historical patterns of mothering and ideologies of the family with cross-national comparisons of policies and experience of lone motherhood in developed and developing countries.

The appropriate form and magnitude of social family policy in the United States is the focus of this collection of essays. Considering both the political debate over access and funding, and the intellectual divisions over the role of welfare in the state, the essays offer an examination of three major subject areas: the normative context of public policy, the link between theory and action, and the impact of specific policies. Topics covered include latchkey children, abortion, treatment of the nation's elderly, joint custody arrangements, and the link between state political culture and family policy.

Examining the substantial changes that have occurred in families, family research, and family law over the last twenty years, this volume describes a paradigm shift in the legal and social regulation of the family from an emphasis on partners' relationships with each other to an emphasis on parents' relationships to their children. In this model, custody has replaced fault as the most important determination made at divorce, and marital status is supplanted by financial and emotional maturity as the indicia of responsible parenthood. The most significant remaining challenge, according to June Carbone, is the need to remake the relationship between adults in such a way that it makes fulfillment of their obligations to children possible. Carbone's broadly interdisciplinary approach, drawing on economics, law, philosophy, and feminism -- as well as references to popular culture, from Doonesbury to Grace Under Fire -- serves as an intellectual survey of family research and of the major theoretical approaches to the family. She evaluates historical, sociological, and psychological research to show how family change is part of a long-term response to changing industrial organization, and to assess the impact of changing family form on children.

"Gender, like race and ethnicity, is an increasingly important factor in assessing social policy in the United States. For those who want to understand the role of gender in the poverty problem today, Women's Life Cycle and Economic Insecurity provides a splendid collection of articles containing new knowledge and fresh insights." Sheila B. Kamerman Professor, Social Policy and Planning Columbia University School of Social Work

"As Michael Harrington's New American Poverty alerted readers to that problem, so the present collection makes readers aware of the various conditions of single parenting. . . . The institutional barriers of courts, housing, and workplace to the economic well-being of the female single parent are explicitly and directly examined. Solid recommendations for institutionalizing change on the state and federal levels are made. The interdisciplinary expertise of the authors covers the fields of law, social work, urban planning, housing, economics, and public policy, all with solid academic preparation. Charts are clear and concise, and the laguage is direct and concrete." Choice

The breakdown of the family has moved in recent years to the forefront of national consciousness. All manner of social ills, from poor academic performance to teenage drug use and gang crime, have been attributed to high divorce rates and the collapse of the traditional two-parent family. Targets of particularly harsh criticism are parents who lose all contact with their children after a divorce. So-called "deadbeat dads" are denounced in political speeches and ridiculed on billboard advertisements; mothers who lose touch with their children are stigmatized as emotionally unstable or lacking maternal instincts. Everyone seems to understand the importance of children being raised by two-parent families and the damage that can occur when one parent loses contact completely. What is significantly less clear is why this loss of contact occurs and what can be done to prevent it. In Out of Touch, Geoffrey Greif explores these issues with clarity, compassion, insight, and an evenhandedness rarely encountered in an arena far more susceptible to acrimonious debate than sympathetic understanding. Setting out to find the reality beneath the catchall categorization of out-of-touch parents as deadbeats, substance abusers, child mistreaters, or criminals, Greif focuses on those parents who tried and, for a vast array of reasons, failed to maintain contact with their children. It is their voices, in a discussion dominated up till now by the custodial parent, that we most need to hear, Greif argues, if we are to uncover ways to avoid such failures in the future. Rather than offering dry statistics and abstract generalizations, Greif lets us hear these voices directly in 26 in-depth interviews with estranged parents and with children caught in the crossfire of painful divorces. Extending over a period of two to ten years, these interviews, and Greif's perceptive analyses of them, reveal the whole spectrum of logistical, emotional, and legal difficulties that keep parents and children apart. From the ordinary problems of visitation rights and child support to the more complex and troubling issues--bitter court battles, accusations of sexual abuse, domestic violence, children rejecting a parent, child kidnapping, and many others--Out of Touch vividly and often heartbreakingly presents all the ways that fathers and mothers, even with the best intentions, can lose contact with their children. But the book does more than tell the stories of failed relationships. Its concluding chapter offers a series of specific and extremely helpful suggestions for families--parents, children, grandparents--who find themselves in danger of complete estrangement. Greif outlines how families can employ support systems, communication skills, mediation, and many other strategies to overcome the most difficult obstacles that occur after a divorce. It is here that the lessons gleaned from the broken relationships of the past become invaluable advice for the future. Informed by fresh perspectives, moving personal accounts, and a clear-sighted approach to a tangled issue, Out of Touch is a timely and deeply important book about both the forces that drive parents and children apart and the understanding that can keep them together.

Drawing on a wealth of legal cases and research -- as well as on the personal stories of families caught in these disputes -- Mary Ann Mason presents a program for reform that is certain to change the terms of the debate on child custody, one of the most highly charged topics on the national agenda.

Discussing the social implications of absentee fathers, this volume provides a text for undergraduates in social policy and should also be of interest to professionals concerned with family breakdown and child support.