Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: Fathers play a significant and underappreciated role in the development of their children, with research demonstrating that a supportive and involved father strengthens a child’s emotional, physical, intellectual, and behavioral development. Children with positive relationships with fathers, even if they do not live in the same household, have stronger mental health, economic success, and academic achievement with lower rates of youth delinquency, school dropout, and teen pregnancy.
Economic stability also leads to positive outcomes for children, including stronger emotional well-being, physical health, and academic success. Family patterns in the United States have resulted in fewer children living with their fathers. The October 2016 Child Trends report on family structure shows the proportion of all children who have not attained the age of 18 living with both parents has decreased over the past half century, from 85 percent in 1960 to 65 percent in 2015, with 23 percent of such children living with their mother only and 4 percent of such children living with their father only in 2015.
A 2015 United States Census analysis of children’s living arrangements and characteristics showed that a child in a father-absent home is more than 5 times more likely to live in poverty than a child in a married-couple family. Father engagement does not depend on living in the same house as the child, with many nonresidential fathers being actively involved with their children and supportive of their children’s mothers. However, low-income fathers experience multiple challenges to contributing financially and emotionally to their children due to limited education and job skills, unstable employment opportunities, child support enforcement policies, incarceration, and strained relationships with the children’s mothers.
Multiple approaches are needed to address these barriers to create opportunities for fathers to sustain their engagement and closeness with their children and families. Federal programs should encourage responsible fatherhood and healthy families by increasing the upward economic mobility of custodial and noncustodial parents so that they can actively participate in financial support and child-rearing as well as maintain positive, healthy, and nonviolent relationships with their children and coparents, including improving compliance with child support obligations and cooperative parenting.