Norms about nonresident fathers' obligations and rights

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Abstract

The new welfare reform law includes a number of provisions designed to increase the amount of child support paid by nonresident fathers, but little is known about whether stronger child support enforement may create parental conflict. Parental conflict may increase when fathers do not wish to pay or when fathers pay and demand more time with their child but mothers resist these demands. Using seven-city data from the study of Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing, we find that very few parents are opposed to the idea that fathers should have child support obligations and rights to see their child and make decisions about how their child is raised. We also find very few disagreements among couples. However, we do find that nearly 20 percent of mothers object to fathers' rights to make decisions among parents whose romantic relationships have ended. We also find weak evidence that tough enforcement increases the odds that mothers will object to fathers' rights.

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  • An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1999 Population Association of American annual meetings in New York, NY, the Institute for Research on Poverty Workshop: Fragile Families and Welfare Reform in Madison, WI, and the 2000 Eastern Sociological Society annual meetings in Baltimore, MD. We gratefully acknowledge the support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Research Network on the Family and the Economy. Computing support came from the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, which receives core support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P30-HD32030).

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