Since 1974, the U.S. federal government has passed more than 30 pieces of legislation related to child support. Such policies have significant implications for children and their custodial and noncustodial parents. I examine the evolution of these policies since the 1970s through cultural conceptualizations of poverty, welfare, and the family in presidential rhetoric. Using written and oral presidential statements from 1970 to 2011 as a symbolic representation of the nation's collective attention, I identify three themes-deservingness, deadbeat dads, and responsible fatherhood. These themes correspond with major shifts in child support policy through periods of welfare reform, the criminalization of the noncustodial father, and the strengthening of families, and helped to legitimize substantial shifts in child support policy over time.Prior to 1974, American custodial parents had little recourse when noncustodial parents did not meet their child support obligations. Since then, the federal government has passed more than 30 pieces of legislation related to child support. Noncustodial parents who do not comply with support orders now face suspended licenses, property forfeiture, and incarceration. The federal child support system began essentially unregulated, with no legal requirements for noncustodial parents to financially support their children. The system first transitioned to weak civil regulation, and then to strong criminal justice penalties for noncompliance. Currently, punishment is somewhat less central, replaced by a stronger focus on healthy relationships between parents and children. Such policies have significant implications for the approximately 6.5 million custodial parents with support orders (in 2013) as well as for noncustodial parents-typically fathers as more than 85% of custodial parents are women (Grall 2016).
More than 22 million or 1 in 4 children in the United States are currently served by the child support program. This program, the third largest used to address childhood poverty, regulates non-custodial parents' financial support of their children through federal, state, and municipal legislation and policies. The collateral consequences, particularly those related to economic stability and criminal justice involvement, associated with child support system participation have been widely studied. However, many of the interpersonal interactions between those who have cases in the system and those who work in the system have been largely ignored. In this article, I use courtroom observations, in-depth interviews, and cultural artifacts to explore the practices of stigmatization and shaming in this important legal and bureaucratic process. I explore stigma and shame in three thematic areas: (1) shame in social interactions, (2) shame as a tool of social control, and (3) the social consequences of shame. I ultimately suggest that stigma and shame in the child support system, resembling that in the welfare and criminal justice systems, reinforces cognitive boundaries between parents perceived as "responsible" and those perceived as "deadbeats."
We offer an invitation to the Du Boisian paradigm for family science. We outline this paradigm in relation to Guba and Lincoln's ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions and our addition of the phenomenological question. A Du Boisian paradigm meets the need for a social justice orientation in social science scholarship, which is equipped to identify, contextualize, and respond to oppression across the globe. A social justice orientation recognizes the centrality of the carceral state and racial capitalism and tends to their ramifications in seeking the transformation of the conditions that produce harm. We offer historical and contemporary examples from diverse disciplines on myriad topics to highlight social justice‐oriented scholarship that has already done the work of pushing the bounds of how we engage with academic research, theory, and praxis, as well as points of consideration for work yet to be done in service of eradicating oppression.
This chapter examines the sociocognitive dimensions of cultural categorizations of deservingness. The social issue of poverty has been a persistent source of debate in the American system of policy development, influenced by conceptual distinctions between the “haves” and “have-nots,” “working moms” and “unemployed dads,” and the “deserving poor” and the “undeserving poor.” Although there is a wealth of literature discussing the ideological underpinnings of stratification systems, these discussions often focus on categorical distinctions between the poor and the nonpoor, with much less discussion of distinctions made among the poor. Moreover, while scholars of culture and policy have long referenced the importance of cultural categories of worthiness in policy development, the theoretical significance of these distinctions has been largely understudied. I expand the discourse on the relationship between cultural representations of worth and social welfare policy by exploring how these categories are conceptualized. Drawing on analytical tools from a sociology of perception framework, I create a model that examines deservingness along continuums of morality and eligibility to highlight the taken-for-granted cultural subtleties that shape perceptions of the poor. I focus on social filters created by norms of poverty, welfare, and the family to explore how the deserving are differentiated from the undeserving.
On April 4, 2015, Walter Scott was shot and killed while running away from a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, after being stopped for a broken taillight. As a video of the shooting circulated, it came to light that Scott had a warrant out for his arrest for failing to pay child support. Scott had previously been incarcerated for non-payment on three separate occasions. This case illuminates a major issue—the use of excessively punitive surveillance and enforcement mechanisms—in the child support system. The reality that parents could face incarceration for falling behind on their child support payments impacts how these individuals engage with their kids and live their daily lives.
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