There’s been a lot in the news lately about the living-dead economy and its effects on child support. It comes as no surprise that, with so many out of work dads, child support payments have decreased and arrearages gone up. Exactly what the nationwide numbers are and how the downturn has affected overall payments and receipts is anyone’s guess at least for the foreseeable future.
None of that has impeded the increased use by news media of the term ‘deadbeat’ as applied to fathers who can’t or don’t make their payments. You might have hoped that there’d be a moratorium on the use of that particularly hateful and inaccurate term, but if so, you’d be disappointed. It seems that, to the brave souls of the press, no dad is too abject to kick.
So I thought I’d offer some actual information from before the recession, just to give us a sort of baseline from which to judge not only news reports but also the unfolding problems created by the spike in unemployment over the last three years.
Here’s the U.S. Census Bureau’s report on “Custodial Mothers and Fathers and their Support, 2007,” that came out in November 2009.
With but few exceptions, its salient feature is how little things have changed since 1993, the first year of figures it reports. I’ve mentioned that before in terms of child custody. In 1993, 84% of custodial parents were mothers; in 2007, it was 82.6%, a change the Census Bureau accurately calls “insignificant.”
Truth to tell, you can say that about most of what’s reported.
For example, in 1993, 59.8% of custodial mothers had a child support order; in 2007, 56.9% did. For dads, the numbers were 42.2% and 40.4%.
In 1993, non-custodial dads paid 65% of their child support obligation and in 2007 it was 62.5%. Non-custodial mothers paid 62.6% and 63.8%.
In short, there’s not much to choose between now and then. Not only the percentages, but the absolute figures remain virtually unchanged.
Still, there are some things that stick out. One is the dramatic difference between percentages of custodial fathers and custodial mothers with child support orders. About 57% of mothers have a court order of support versus only about 40% for fathers.
The report doesn’t explain this difference even though it discusses why parents generally don’t demand a support order. Particularly in an era of greater numbers of women doing paid work, you’d think there’d be more of them paying child support, but the number of custodial dads has gone up faster than the number of them obtaining a court order for the mom to pay support.
I can only guess at the reason for that. I’ve read that dads are less likely to request an order of support, and it seems reasonable that their hesitancy stems from wanting to let sleeping dogs lie. That is, we all know that mothers are overwhelmingly given primary custody and so, might the rare dad who gets it be leery of pushing for more? If he tries for both custody and support, might he anger an otherwise quiescent ex?
That seem particularly likely given the fact that most divorces are settled by the parties, and fathers know full well that, if they leave it to the court to decide, she’ll get the kids. So he accepts half a loaf; she’s willing to give him custody, and he hesitates to demand more.
As numerous studies (e.g. Mnookin and Kornhauser) show, parties to divorce proceedings tend to bargain with knowledge of the law and the tendencies of courts in mind. So dads’ hesitancy to ask for a support order makes sense.
Meanwhile, Census Bureau data on custodial parents and poverty show that the percentage of custodial mothers living in poverty has come down markedly since 1993. In that year, 36.8% of custodial mothers lived in poverty while in 2007, 27% did.
That’s quite a change, but custodial dads are still less than half as likely to live in poverty as custodial moms. In 1993, about 15% of custodial dads lived in poverty while in 2007, about 12.9% did.
Since non-custodial mothers and fathers pay about the same in child support, that’s not likely to explain the difference in poverty rates for custodial mothers and fathers. And indeed it doesn’t. The cause looks to be much more direct; custodial mothers do a lot less paid work than do custodial fathers. Only 49.8% of custodial mothers work full time year-round versus 71.7% of custodial fathers.
Given that financial well-being is important to child well-being, you’d think that the greater incomes of fathers might militate in their favor when courts consider custody. Actually, it’s pretty clear that men’s greater propensity for full-time employment tends to have the opposite effect. It tends to get them tagged with the scarlet letter of non-primary parent and in that way they become second-class citizens in divorce court.
I’ve argued before that the fact that men work more shouldn’t count against them when custody orders are made. That this would mean fewer kids living in poverty if more fathers got custody seems to further support my position.
It’s always interesting to read actual data. That’s particularly so since the real information so often contradicts what we see in the mainstream media.