The Forms and Functions of Child Support Stigma

Abstract

The stigmatization of single mothers who receive child support proliferates in news media, policy, and popular culture. Drawing on critical stigma literature, we examined data from interviews conducted with child support recipients in Australia and the United Kingdom. Our analysis examined how women receiving child support experienced stigma, how stigma was applied to other women in similar situations, and the political implications of these framings. Our interview data suggested child support stigma can be grouped into three categories, where women were seen to contravene maternal norms, patriarchal norms, and/or familial norms. These norms sanctioned mothers’ use of, amount of, and reliance on child support, viewing it fundamentally as men’s money that women take, rather than the contribution of a nonresident parent to their children’s upbringing. The source of stigma may have been ex-partners, child support bureaucratic systems, or recipients themselves, but the social and political functions of child support stigma remained the same: it discouraged solidarity between recipients and encouraged policy reform that further disadvantaged them.