Fathers, the Welfare System, and the Virtues and Perils of Child-Support Enforcement

Abstract

FOR half a century, Aid to Families with Dependent Children 1('AFDC)1-the program of federally supported cash assistance to low-income families with children-has been oddly conceived. Congress has chosen to make assistance available almost solely to low-income single-parent families, not all low-income parents with children. At first many of the eligible single parents were women whose husbands had died. Over time, a growing majority were women who had been married to their children's father but who had separated or divorced. Today, to an ever increasing extent, they are women who were never married to the fathers of their children.2 Where are men and fathers in this scheme of assistance? They are themselves eligible for AFDC if their income is sufficiently low and if they are the single custodial parent of a child. They are also eligible if they are living with the mother and the child and one of the two adults is incapacitated or meets some other stringent criteria. Few fathers qualify.3 AFDC is a program for children and their mothers. Low-income men are not the object of our public compassion. They are a cause of the problem. Over the last several decades, as the proportion of American children living in one-parent families has grown-tripling between the