Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: The United States almost has the highest child poverty rate among 34 industrialized countries. Thirty-two percent of all children in the United States lived with only 1 or neither of their parents. African-American children are the most likely of all children to live in such families—63 percent, compared to 53 percent of American Indian children, 34 percent of Hispanic children, 24 percent of non-Hispanic White children, and 15 percent of Asian-American and Pacific Islander children.
One of the most important factors in a child’s upbringing is whether the child is brought up in a loving, healthy, supportive environment. Children who grow up with 2 parents are, on average, more likely than their peers in single-parent homes to finish high school and be economically self-sufficient. Father-child interaction, like mother-child interaction, has been shown to promote the positive physical, social, emotional, and mental development of children. Children typically live with a single parent when their parents are divorced or did not marry.
More than 1/3 of all first marriages end in divorce, and about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children. More than 40 percent of all births are to unmarried women. Nearly 1 in 3 families with children have only 1 parent present, and more than 1 in 5 children live absent their biological father. Recent studies demonstrate that most unwed fathers in urban areas are highly involved with the mother of their child before and after the child's birth, with 80 percent involved during the mother's pregnancy, and 50 percent living with the child’s mother at the time of the child's birth.
However, the relationship between the parents often does not last, and many fathers do not maintain contact with their children as the children grow up. An estimated 49 percent of the children who live in households without their father have not seen their fathers in at least 1 year. Fathers' love, care, and emotional support are positively linked to good social, emotional, and cognitive development in their children; their children’s academic achievement; lower rates of risky behaviors and contact the juvenile justice system; positive social behavior; positive emotional health; and healthy self-esteem.
Research has demonstrated that most fathers want to do well for their children. Rates of visitation among non-custodial fathers are higher than expected and mothers do want fathers involved in the lives of their children. The inability of parents to sustain a healthy relationship with their child’s other parent and remain involved in their child's life can have severe negative consequences for the parents, the child, their community, and taxpayers. Single-parent families are about 4 times as likely to be poor as married-couple families.
Children raised in single-parent families are more likely than children raised in 2-parent families to do poorly in school, have emotional and behavioral problems, become teenage parents, commit crimes, smoke cigarettes, abuse drugs and alcohol, and have poverty-level incomes as adults. High rates of unemployment and low wages are primary reasons why parents do not marry and why 2-parent families break up. When components of family and jobs supports are paired with responsible fatherhood programming, more fathers declare paternity, more live with their children, and more noncustodial men pay child support.
Domestic violence is also a significant problem leading to the nonformation or breakup of 2-parent families. Unemployment for Black workers remained almost double what it is for Whites, a ratio unchanged in at least 35 years. In metropolitan areas, Blacks are the racial group most spatially isolated from available jobs. A history of incarceration is a major barrier to employment. Sixty percent of young African-American men who dropped out of high school have served time. When these men leave prison, they often have difficulty finding a job and supporting their children.
Youth who are disconnected from school and employment are more likely than others to engage in crime, become incarcerated, and rely on public systems of support. While all races and ethnicities are represented among this youth population, research studies show that African-American males constitute a disproportionate share due to their overrepresentation in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Over ½ of State prison inmates are parents. When noncustodial parents go to prison, most of them are required to pay their child support obligation, even though they have little ability to pay the support.
When these parents leave prison, they typically owe more than $20,000 in child support debt. Noncustodial parents leaving prison often re-enter the underground economy because of financial pressures or to avoid the child support system, making it less likely that they will successfully rejoin society and reunite with their families. Children should receive the child support paid by their parents, and the government should not keep the money to recover welfare costs. Regular child support income appears to have a greater positive impact on children dollar for dollar than other types of income.
Researchers in Wisconsin found that when monthly child support was passed through to families receiving assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program established under part A of title IV of the Social Security Act
(TANF)and disregarded 100 percent in determining assistance for the families, fathers paid more child support, established their legal relationship with their children more quickly, and worked less in the underground economy. Moreover, the State costs of a full pass-through and disregard of child support were fully offset by increased payments by fathers and decreased public assistance use by families. Funding spent on Federal child support collection is cost-effective, especially when it addresses fathers’ particular circumstances and passes payments through to the family. The child support program collects $5.12 in support payments for families for every public dollar spent. The Department of Health and Human Services National Child Support Enforcement Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2005 through 2009 states that child support is no longer a welfare reimbursement, revenue-producing device for the Federal and State governments; it is a family-first program, intended to ensure families' self-sufficiency by making child support a more reliable source of income . Current law permits States to apply the cost of passing through child support to families receiving assistance under the TANF program toward their maintenance of effort
(MOE)requirements, but only to the extent that the State disregards the child support payments in determining TANF eligibility and payment amount. While the Federal Government has over 40 programs that provide some funding for employment and training, the United States is near the bottom of industrialized nations in spending on active labor market policy . Low-income men have become increasingly disconnected from school and work—and increasingly poor. A large portion of those men are non-custodial fathers. The negative effect of a criminal conviction is substantially larger for Blacks than for Whites. African-Americans constitute only 14 percent of drug users, but they represent 32 percent of those arrested for drug offenses, 44 percent of drug convictions, and 45 percent of drug offenders in State prison. One in 15 African-American males over 18 is behind bars as opposed to 1 out of 36 for Latinos and one out of 106 for White males. In addition, since 2000, on average, 682,000 inmates have been released from prison annually. This number does not include those who come home from city and county jails. If current trends continue, the chilling extrapolation is that 1 in 3 Black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. These men are disproportionately removed from lower income, segregated, and disinvested communities, where they will eventually return—too often without the skills they need to become successful husbands, fathers, neighbors, and wage earners. Programs that increase employment opportunity and reduce barriers by increasing employment opportunity and reducing recidivism will benefit children and families. Transitional jobs programs have shown promise in reducing unemployment among chronically unemployed or underemployed population groups, including formerly incarcerated individuals, the homeless, and young African-American men. To strengthen families it is important to improve the upward economic mobility of the custodial and noncustodial parent wage-earners, as well as youth at risk of early parenthood or incarceration, by providing the skills and experience necessary to access jobs with family sustaining wages and benefits. In families in which all the members do not live together, this is important to enable the prompt and consistent payment of adequate child support. It is important and useful to foster local and regional economic development and job advancement for workers, especially young custodial and noncustodial parents, by funding local collaborations among business, education, and the community in the development of pathways for preparing disadvantaged citizens to meet the workforce needs of the local and regional economy. Employers benefit from working with and being supported by the local education, postsecondary, and workforce systems in identifying the academic and occupational skill sets needed to fill the skilled jobs in the changing economy. Local economic and community development is enhanced when residents have access to higher wage employment, thus increasing the tax base, fueling the economy, and contributing to greater family economic security. Public-private career pathways partnerships are an important tool for linking employers and workers with the workforce education services they need and for integrating community economic development and workforce education services. Transitional jobs programs can serve as the first step in a career pathway by giving unemployed individuals with multiple barriers to employment, valuable work experience and related services. Evaluations of State child support enforcement policies have shown that supportive child support enforcement policies, rather than coercive ones, have a positive impact on father involvement. The purpose of child support is to provide necessary income support for and increase the well-being of children living apart from a parent. To improve the ability of low-income noncustodial parents to provide long-term support and care for their children throughout their entire childhood, it is important that child support polices support parental efforts to pursue education and employment and to stay involved with their children. Responsible parenthood includes active participation in financial support and child-rearing, as well as the formation and maintenance of a positive, healthy, and nonviolent relationship between parent and child and a cooperative, healthy, and nonviolent relationship between parents. States should be encouraged to implement voluntary programs that provide support for responsible parenting, including by increasing the employment and financial security of parents, and the parental involvement of noncustodial parents. Promoting responsible parenthood saves the government money by reducing the need for public assistance, increasing the educational attainment of children, reducing juvenile delinquency and crime, reducing substance abuse, and lowering rates of unemployment. Programs to encourage responsible fatherhood or responsible motherhood should promote and provide support services for— fostering loving and healthy relationships between parents and children; increasing responsibility of noncustodial parents for the long-term care and financial well-being of their children; increasing employment of low-income, noncustodial parents and improving compliance with child support obligations; and reducing barriers to active 2-parent involvement and cooperative parenting. The promotion of marriage and responsible parenthood should not minimize the standing or parenting efforts of single parents or other caregivers, lessen the protection of children from abusive parents, or compromise the safety or health of the custodial or noncustodial parent, but should increase the chance that children will have 2 caring parents to help them grow up healthy and secure.