Indebted Relationships: Child Support Arrears and Nonresident Fathers' Involvement With Children

Abstract

Low‐income, nonresident fathers owe a disproportionate amount of child support arrears, creating potential challenges for these fathers and their family relationships. This article uses mediation analysis to provide new evidence about how and why child support debt is related to paternal involvement using information from 1,017 nonresident fathers in the Fragile Families Study. Results show that child support arrears are associated with nonresident fathers having significantly less contact with children, being less engaged with them in daily activities, and providing less frequent in‐kind support 9 years after the birth. This negative association between child support debt and father involvement is most strongly and consistently mediated by the quality of the relationship between the biological parents. Although child support policies are designed to facilitate fathers' economic and emotional support, these results suggest that the accruement of child support debt may serve as an important barrier to father involvement.

“Harder Being Without the Baby”: Fathers' Coparenting Perspectives in Responsible Fatherhood Programming

“…Coupled or not, how well parents get along influences how active fathers are in children's lives (Carlson, Pilkauskas, McLanahan, & Brooks‐Gunn, ; Fagan & Palkovitz, ). Fathers are more likely to provide formal and informal child support when they have cooperative coparenting relationships with mothers (Goldberg, ; Turner & Waller, ), and the association is stronger for informal support, which both mothers and fathers prefer (Edin & Nelson, ; Waller & Emory, ). As coparenting relationships deteriorate post breakup, paternal informal support tends to decrease, which often prompts mothers to file court orders, leading to the further decline in relationship quality (Goldberg, ).…”

Providing After Prison: Nonresident Fathers’ Formal and Informal Contributions to Children

“…Empirical studies find that fathers with a history of incarceration are less likely to provide any economic support to young children (Washington, Juan, and Haskins 2018;Geller, Garfinkel, and Western 2011), and those who do contribute provide a lesser amount (Geller, Garfinkel, and Western 2011). Similarly, fathers with a history of incarceration are more likely to have accrued child support arrears-debt associated with nonpayment or underpayment of formal child support (Turner and Waller 2017;McLeod and Gottlieb 2018;Katzenstein and Waller 2015). A portion of this debt may be owed to the state to reimburse welfare costs, and may include Medicaid birthing costs, interest, and other fines and fees.…”

“…Among previously incarcerated fathers, informal cash and in-kind contributions are also apt to be lower because fathers maintain fewer informal support arrangements postincarceration (Swisher and Waller 2008), and informal support is closely linked to the time they spend with their children (Nepomnyaschy 2007;Turner and Waller 2017;Waller, Dwyer Emory, and Paul 2018). Indeed, one study finds that formerly incarcerated fathers provided goods such as clothes, school supplies, and other material items for their children less frequently than their never-incarcerated counterparts (Washington, Juan, and Haskins 2018).…”

“…We examine multiple forms of economic support, including nonresident fathers' provision of formal child support, accrual of arrears, informal cash support, and in-kind (noncash) contributions. Although arrears are not direct measures of fathers' contributions, they are of great concern to policymakers because they are disproportionately owed by lowincome fathers and are negatively associated with employment, child support payments, and relationships with coparents and children (Cancian, Heinrich, and Chung 2013;Sorensen, Sousa, and Schaner 2007;Miller and Mincy 2012;Turner and Waller 2017).…”

La relación socio-afectiva del contexto familiar en el desarrollo integral de los adolescentes

“…Por este motivo, el padre invierte su tiempo en laborar por lo tanto el contacto entre padre-hijo disminuye, y aún más si el padre no vive con el hijo. La relación padre-hijo empeora cuando el padre es de bajos recursos y debe pagar una manutención (Turner & Waller, 2017). De igual manera, en una familia de progenitores unidos puede existir violencia familiar o un excesivo autoritarismo de parte del padre que no aporta en la relación afectiva padre-hijo, sino que hace lo contrario, convirtiendo al adolescente violento y con problemas psicológicos (Lamb, Humphreys, & Hegarty, 2018).…”