On June 17, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support held a hearing to review responsible fatherhood programs.
Chair Jim McDermott (D-WA) said, “Responsible fatherhood programs help non-custodial parents – in most cases men, but in some cases women – develop the skills they need to build strong and healthy relationships with their children. These programs link fathers to support services that will help them meet their parental responsibilities. Programs like this can be particularly beneficial to low-income dads who face obstacles in meeting their financial obligations. The challenges facing low-income dads are similar to the problems confronting low-income mothers. Many of these dads experience difficulties in finding good paying jobs, or live in communities with concentrated levels of poverty and have difficulty securing affordable housing. As a number of policy experts have indicated, some men who are not financially supporting their children are not ‘dead beats,’ but simply ‘dead broke.’ While a number of safety-net services are available to custodial parents, there are a limited number of services that are available to non-custodial parents.”
Ranking Member John Linder (R-GA) said, “We appreciate the efforts of so many here today and across the country who work to promote responsible fatherhood. I suspect they would all agree that, in the words of [Former President] Ronald Reagan, ‘the best possible social program is a job.’ Without real jobs, no program spending will ever be enough…For the first time ever, less than half of all young men work today. Some are in school, but as prior hearings noted, too many are ‘disconnected’ from work, school, and even family. Even when they reach [ages] 25 to 34, only 80 percent are working – another record low. The bottom line is we face an historic crisis of joblessness among young men and fathers. There are not enough jobs for those who want to work, and millions lack the skills to hold the jobs that are available. The reasons why include decades-long trends like the breakdown of families and the failings of public education. Those issues extend well beyond today’s hearing. But more immediate causes include the failure of stimulus to create promised jobs, despite adding $1 trillion in debt that young people especially must shoulder.”
“The Urban Institute found that child support is the second largest source of income for poor single mother-headed families who receive it, next to the mother’s own earnings,” said David Hansell, principal deputy assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). He continued, “ Along with payments through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), child support has emerged as one of the main income supplements for low-wage, single mother-headed families.” Mr. Hansell added “Child Support Enforcement (CSE) also plays a critical role in promoting responsible fatherhood. Since its inception, the program has promoted responsible fatherhood by establishing and enforcing child support obligations for children who live apart from a parent, typically their father. Over time, Congress has strengthened the role of child support in helping families secure financial support for their children. In the Family Support Act of 1988 [P.L. 100-485], Congress authorized the first multi-state demonstration project aimed at improving the employment, child support, and parenting outcomes of unemployed, non-custodial parents of children receiving public assistance. Since then, the CSE program has been actively involved in developing and implementing policies and practices that promote responsible fatherhood by setting realistic child support orders, reducing unmanageable child support debt, and passing through child support to families. Through its discretionary grants and performance incentive funds, the CSE program also helps support employment-oriented programs for fathers in the child support program, realizing that these programs benefit the children they serve. As we know, many low-income fathers face significant barriers to employment and self-sufficiency. These include limited education and employment skills, health problems, and incarceration. Throughout the nation, there are many ongoing efforts to engage fathers in the lives of their children. These programs vary in size, setting, populations of focus, and services provided. Some programs target their services to incarcerated fathers, others focus on teen fathers, while still others focus on fathers behind in their child support or recently released from prison. Many of these programs have matured, but sustained funding remains a challenge.”
Dr. Ronald Mincy, Maurice V. Russell professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice at the Columbia University School of Social Work, said, “In contrast to the evidence about other forms of involvement, prior studies have shown clear evidence that financial contributions from non-resident fathers improve child well-being. This finding was true whether studies measured fathers’ financial contributions by child support payments alone or in combination with family income before marital dissolution. Further, child support payments comprised a substantial portion of the incomes of custodial families and therefore, had strong potential to alleviate child poverty. Because of the substantial efforts that have been made to improve the government’s ability to require nonresident fathers to pay child support, these findings should be encouraging. From 1978, real federal and state expenditures on child support enforcement have increased from over $800 million to nearly $5.5 billion in 2006. Child support enforcement (CSE) was originally envisioned as a means for the government to recoup expenses incurred in support of single-mothers and children receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), but increasingly has come to be involved in a range of activities aimed at promoting family and child well-being. While the CSE program has been successful in establishing new paternities and child support orders (1.7 million new paternities and 1.2 million new child support orders were established in 2006), the percent of custodial mothers who had a child support order in 2005 (61.4 percent) was little changed from 1978 (59.1 percent), when the CSE program was in its infancy. This apparent paradox is caused by the shifting composition of custodial mother families, which over the past decades has increasingly been comprised of never-married mothers. As a group, never-married mothers tend to be relatively disadvantaged and have historically had lower rates of child support receipt. Thus, any potential gains that might have accrued by including an increasingly large percentage of never-married mothers in the CSE system have been offset by the substantially lower rate at which these mothers receive child support compared with the rate of child support receipt among their currently married or ever-married counterparts.”
“When Casey began its investments in responsible fatherhood in the early 1990s, births outside of marriage, father absence, and child support collection – especially for never married mothers – were glaring problems,” said Ralph Smith, executive vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “But since then, thanks in no small part to the policies of federal and state governments, improvements are measurable. Here’s just a brief list of how a national focus on responsible fatherhood has paid off. From the mid-1990s until now, the nation has seen: The rate of teen births decline, as well as a decline in the rate of repeat teen births. More fathers declare paternity – the first, most crucial step on the road to responsible fatherhood, so that now nine in ten children have paternity established, compared to only around six in ten just a decade ago. More fathers live with their children. And more lower-income children live with a father present. Although it may be too early to tell if this trend is a long-term one, the level of change in the last several years has not been seen in three decades, and is therefore encouraging news. More fathers pay child support. That means that resources are available for more children because of significant movement toward a ‘culture of compliance’ in child support collection rates – from only 20 percent in 1996 to more than 50 percent only a decade later. The child support program collects almost $5 in support payments for families for every public dollar that is spent.”
Mr. Smith added, “Today we take satisfaction in the changes that have occurred on all of these fronts: Across political preferences, a common ground agreement has been forged that men be required, encouraged, and enabled to accept the responsibility to contribute to the social, emotional, and economic well being of their children, regardless of whether those fathers live in the same home as the children…That is, government would need to address the deep-seated structural inequities experienced by vulnerable and marginalized fathers, and these fathers would need to accept the irreplaceable involvement their children needed from them. Since its inception, the responsible fatherhood field increasingly has learned from, and reached out to, the broad range of fathers and their advocates, across economic and racial-ethnic groups, and inclusive of military dads, formerly incarcerated fathers, men, and women working to reduce domestic violence, and advocates for healthy marriage. Because all children need their fathers, and fathers and mothers need constructive relationships to support their children best, there is room in the tent for all of these interests. You will find active collaborations across them.”
Milton Lee, Jr., magistrate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia; Dr. Kirk Harris, facilitator for the National Fatherhood Leaders Group; Nathan Rauschendorfer, program manager of Parenting Services at Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis; and Dr. Mark Perry, professor of Economics at the University of Michigan-Flint and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, also testified.
