U.S. children are more likely to live apart from a biological parent than at any time in history. Although the Child Support Enforcement system has tremendous reach, its policies have not kept pace with significant economic, demographic, and cultural changes. Narrative analysis of in‐depth interviews with 429 low‐income noncustodial fathers suggests that the system faces a crisis of legitimacy. Visualization of language used to describe all forms child support show that the formal system is considered punitive and to lead to a loss of power and autonomy. Further, it is not associated with coparenting or the father–child bond—themes closely associated with informal and in‐kind support. Rather than stoking men's identities as providers, the system becomes “just another bill to pay.” Orders must be sustainable, all fathers should have coparenting agreements, and alternative forms of support should count toward fathers' obligations. Recovery of government welfare costs should be eliminated.
Continental transform plate boundaries are broad, composed of numerous active and subparallel strike-slip fault zones. Irregular geometry along the major transform structure creates convergence and divergence zones within the plate boundary where other strike-slip faults terminate. Some prominent irregularities result from microplate interactions. Relative fault displacement, diminishing to zero at fault terminations, must be accommodated or transferred to other structures, laterally or vertically, away from the fault end-point. Distinct styles of strike-slip fault termination may represent different degrees of vertical strain partitioning within the plate boundary.The Western Transverse Ranges (WTR) of California mark a major structural discontinuity that cuts at high angle across the Pacific-North America transform boundary. Within the California Continental Borderland, two end-member classes of right-slip fault termination against the WTR are apparent. (1) Several major faults, including the San Clemente, San Pedro Basin, Ferrelo and Newport-Inglewood, intersect the southern boundary of the WTR at high angles, with negligible to minor local deflection and minor dissipation of right shear at the Earth’s surface. These faults are inferred to cut through the entire borderland crust and continue in the lower crust beneath the WTR, as evident in geophysical data. These ‘blind’ near vertical faults may control segmentation and earthquake activity on the overlying west-trending WTR structures. (2) In contrast, the Palos Verdes and possibly Whittier faults appear broadly deflected westward to merge at low angle with WTR structure. NW-trending faults rotate counterclockwise, away from the axis of principal shortening as observed in pure shear models, and slip is dissipated through folding, thrust transfer and rotation. Deflected faults are inferred to be predominately upper crustal features, detached from the lower crust and unable to underthrust the WTR. These two distinct right-slip fault termination styles, and associated convergent structures, suggest that basal shear drives vertical-axis rotation of the WTR block over the underthrust Inner Borderland plate. Furthermore, the lower plate, slivered by these right-slip faults, is incompletely coupled with the Pacific plate.
In this essay, we explore how working-class men describe their attachments to work, family, and religion. We draw upon in-depth, life history interviews conducted in four metropolitan areas with racially and ethnically diverse groups of working-class men with a high school diploma but no four-year college degree. Between 2000 and 2013, we deployed heterogeneous sampling techniques in the black and white working-class neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and the Philadelphia/Camden area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We screened to ensure that each respondent had at least one minor child, making sure to include a subset potentially subject to a child support order (because they were not married to, or living with, their child's mother). We interviewed roughly even numbers of black and white men in each site for a total of 107 respondents. Our approach allows us to explore complex questions in a rich and granular way that allows unanticipated results to emerge. These working-class men showed both a detachment from institutions and an engagement with more autonomous forms of work, childrearing, and spirituality, often with an emphasis on generativity, by which we mean a desire to guide and nurture the next generation. We also discuss the extent to which this autonomous and generative self is also a haphazard self, which may be aligned with counterproductive behaviors. And we look at racial and ethnic difference in perceptions of social standing.
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