This document considers key issues that have been raised in response to the Government's White Paper, 'A new system of child maintenance' (Cm. 6979, ISBN 9780101697927) which was published in December 2006. The White Paper was based on the recommendations made by Sir David Henshaw in his report "Recovering child support: routes to responsibility" (Cm. 6984, ISBN 010168942X).
This open access book provides an overview of the ever-growing phenomenon of children in shared physical custody thereby providing legal, psychological, family sociological and demographical insights. It describes how, despite the long evolution of broken families, only the last decade has seen a radical shift in custody arrangements for children in divorced families and the gender revolution in parenting which is taking place. The chapters have a national or cross-national perspective and address topics like prevalence and types of shared physical custody, legal frames regulating custody arrangements, stability and changes in arrangements across the life course of children, socio‐economic, psychological, social well-being of various family members involved in different custody arrangements. With the book being an interdisciplinary collaboration, it is interesting read for social scientists in demography, sociology, psychology, law and policy makers with an interest family studies and custody arrangements.
"This engaging collection gathers theoretical and empirical insights from leading family policy experts. The authors - representing diverse countries, disciplines, and methods - bring to life the volume's innovative conceptual framework, which is organized around policy institutions, both public and private. The volume closes with a call for new lines of research that should inform family policy scholars for years to come."--Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA "Featuring exciting contributors from a range of often-siloed scholarly disciplines, countries and cultures, this Handbook offers nuanced insights into how interacting societal inequality factors influence family policy enactment to reinforce or improve inequality outcomes across gender, class, and nations. It is ambitious, broad-reaching, and succeeds in providing a strategic view within and across nations to inspire thoughtful evidence-based policy implications to improve societies in the future."--Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Purdue University, USA This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children's development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women's empowered roles
This comprehensive guide to child support fills a void for much-needed information about the government-operated "Title IV-D" child support program, which impacts over one in ten adults (28 million parents), and over one quarter of the nation's children. In the U.S. 42% of children are born out of wedlock, and the vast majority of them are children in Title IV-D cases. One in two children will spend some of his or her minority years in a household without two parents. While there is a plethora of topical information on state, federal, and tribal child support program websites, until now, there has been no single, definitive, layperson's guide to the government-run child support program. Any books that touch on this topic are written by matrimonial/divorce lawyers who look at a child support legal system from a 10,000-foot height leaving a $20,000 attorney bill. Few understand the nuances and complexities of the Title IV-D system. This system of 53,000 state and local workers throughout the country collected $28.5 billion in over 14 million cases in 2015. This book is designed to help mothers and fathers navigate through the national child support system, and understand their rights, responsibilities, and the laws regarding their cases. It will also serve as an excellent resource for child support professionals, family law attorneys, advocates, stakeholders, and public officials around the country who want to become more familiar with the system. Broken relationships, financial struggles, fights over kids - these are the back stories to the millions of families involved in the child support program. The big three issues in most peoples' lives are at its heart: sex, money, and children. Child support is always in the news. Every day, tabloids and daytime talk shows feature paternity and child support issues - because it sells due to huge pent-up interest. Everyone knows someone with a case, and most have uninformed opinions and anecdotes about the handling or mishandling of their cases. It's time to set the record straight. Filled with practical information, the authors address both common and unusual situations encountered by parents who are in the child support system, either voluntarily or involuntarily. It provides insights regarding paternity, child support orders, enforcement of child support orders, cases with parents in two different states or countries, and emphasizes how parents can help themselves and their children. The authors, Jeff Ball and Mary Ann Wellbank, are experts in the field of child support whose careers in the program have each spanned over 25 years. Throughout their careers, they have helped mothers and fathers understand their rights, responsibilities, and options with respect to the IV-D program, and have collaborated extensively with other stakeholders to improve outcomes for children. This is a must read for divorced, separated, and never married parents involved in the child support system.
Lisa D. Brush turns a gendered lens on states, power, and governance, showing the inherent inequalities in political systems and gender systems and how they intersect. She reveals the way in which state power supports male dominance in American and other western political systems. This book a useful antidote to traditional textbooks on government, the state, politics, and social policy.
The proportion of children living in households headed by single women is more than one in five. There is concern (and some evidence) that children of single parents are less likely to be successful adults. The book discusses the trends in public debate about this problem. In particular, it examines the issue of providing public assistance to such families and whether doing so fosters long-term welfare dependency.
Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as “deadbeat dads.” Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly—without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires, and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the relationship’s demise. They offer keen insight into a radical redefinition of family life where the father-child bond is central and parental ties are peripheral. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Doing the Best I Can shows how mammoth economic and cultural changes have transformed the meaning of fatherhood among the urban poor. Intimate interviews with more than 100 fathers make real the significant obstacles faced by low-income men at every step in the familial process: from the difficulties of romantic relationships, to decision-making dilemmas at conception, to the often celebratory moment of birth, and finally to the hardships that accompany the early years of the child's life, and beyond.
In the early 1990s 50,000 children were in New York City's foster care system. By 2011 there were fewer than 15,000. In his book, David Tobis shows how such radical change was driven largely by a movement of mothers whose children had been placed into foster care, who fought to become advocates and stakeholders in a system that had previously viewed them as part of the problem. This book serves as an example of how advocates can change a system, as told from the perspective of key figures, change agents, and the parent advocates themselves.
This report calls on the Government to establish a more efficient way to administer the statutory child maintenance service, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. It highlights that in 2009-10 it cost £572 million to administer its collection service but that only £1,141 million in maintenance payments reached children; a cost of 50 pence for every £1 collected. The report examines the Government's proposed reforms of the child maintenance system, as set out in the Green Paper 'Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility' (Cm. 7990. ISBN 9780101799027). The report's recommendations include: non-resident parents should be required to pay child maintenance through direct deductions from their salaries or bank accounts, ensuring that parents with care receive agreed child maintenance payments on time and at the correct level; where a parent with care has taken all reasonable steps to reach a voluntary agreement, both the proposed application and collection charge for the service should be borne by the non-resident parent; the proposals for collection charges are excessive and unnecessarily complex and should be replaced by a single, modest administrative charge; the Government must ensure that its proposed network of improved advice and support services is operating effectively in all areas before charges for the statutory system are introduced; the proposed gateway process is a positive development, as mediation and collaboration could resolve problems for separating parents at the earliest stage; the operational weaknesses of the Child Support Agency, including ongoing IT problems and a reported £3.8 billion in uncollected payments must be addressed.
