On May 16, 2002, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4737, the Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2002, which, among other things, amends the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to encourage states to make more efforts to promote marriage and, to a lesser extent, responsible fatherhood. The bill also earmarks substantial funds -- $1.6 billion -- focused almost exclusively for the promotion and support of marriage. In this paper, we describe and analyze the various family formation provisions in H.R. 4737 and offer recommendations for how the…
The U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF), with support from the Welfare Peer Technical Assistance Network, sponsored the Uniting Incarcerated Parents and their Families workshop on May 21-22, 2002, in Orlando, FL. Participants included representatives from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), corrections staff, and child care staff from the following States: Alabama, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. The purpose of this 2-day seminar was two fold: to provide participants with an opportunity to understand how TANF agencies and corrections staff can work…
The purpose of this report is to describe the alignment of the child support order with the earnings of non-custodial parents who have children on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and to describe the relationship of this alignment with their compliance with the support order. (Author abstract).
Low-income families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio were interviewed twice during a 16-month period about children's living arrangements. At the time of the first interview, 57 percent of children were living with their mother, who was neither married nor cohabitating. Twenty percent of children lived with two married, biological parents; five percent lived with two cohabitating biological parents; five percent lived with a mother who was married to a nonbiological father; nine percent lived with neither parent; and two percent lived with a mother who was cohabitating with a man who was…
This report contends that father absence matters. While the poverty rate for two-parent families is 8.4%, it is 31.3% in divorced families and 64.1% where parents never married. Children raised without fathers perform more poorly in school, develop emotional problems, engage in risky behavior, and experience more violence. Children raised with fathers have higher self-esteem, learn better, and are less likely to be depressed. Some 23 million children live in homes without fathers. This report, tracing the history, accomplishments, and current needs of the fatherhood field, is addressed to…
