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To help unmarried parents improve their coparenting relationship, this National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) spotlight on research provides a quick look at findings from a recent journal article, “Harder Being Without the Baby”: Fathers’ Coparenting Perspectives in Responsible Fatherhood Programming (Randles, 2020).

The research drew on interviews and focus groups conducted with 64 low-income fathers who participated in a federally funded responsible fatherhood program in California. The program is referred to as “DADS” in the article and in this spotlight.

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Paternal involvement in the lives of their children has a positive influence on child and family outcomes, including breastfeeding rates, sleep training, nutrition and exercise, and developmental outcomes. Much of the research on paternal involvement, however, focuses on Caucasian fathers of middle and high socioeconomic status (SES). Within an urban, primarily Latino, lower SES community, we seek to involve and empower fathers through education on common child rearing topics.

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In 2016, more than one in four children under 21 in the United States lived in a household apart from one of their parents. In 80 percent of these households, the custodial parent was the mother and the non-residential parent was the father. The amount and frequency of financial support that both parents provide shapes household economic stability, which can also affect children’s overall health and well-being. Non-residential parents often have a legal obligation to help pay the costs associated with raising their children. However, some non-residential parents pay these costs…

This research brief from the Office of Child Support Enforcement identifies findings from a five-site Parenting Time Opportunities for Children (PTOC) grant. This grant, awarded to child support agencies in California, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Oregon, was intended to demonstrate how child support agencies can include parenting time orders in child support enforcement actions and how the increases in noncustodial parenting time, with safeguards in place for child welfare, led to improved relationships and increased compliance with child support payment.

Research on the situated contexts of fathering has found that the social and symbolic dimensions of fathering spaces influence how men construct and enact fatherhood scripts. Qualitative studies of fatherhood programs have mostly investigated parenting education and job assistance programs, revealing how fathering interventions allow disadvantaged men to shape positive paternal identities. In‐depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with a nonrandom sample of 64 primarily Black and Latino low‐income fathers who participated in a federally funded responsible fatherhood program. An…

In fiscal year 2018, noncustodial parents were obligated to pay nearly $33.6 billion in current child support on behalf of the 15 million children served by the Title IV-D child support program. One-third of that, or $11 billion, was not collected. Unemployment is the leading reason for non-payment of child support by noncustodial parents. This brief will explore the opportunities at the state and federal levels to provide employment services to noncustodial parents and increase child support payments in the process.

Objective: To examine sources of theoretical variation in youth and caregiver perceptions of nonresident father involvement.Background: Relationship complexity and environmental factors can result in complicated trajectories of father involvement. We examined both caregiver and youth perceptions of nonresident father–child relationships among low-income, single-parent families that were often affected by paternal incarceration.

Method: The present study drew from a sample of families served by a Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program in a metropolitan region of a Mid-Atlantic state…