PROVO, Utah — Public policy in the United States in recent decades has focused almost solely on the importance of nonresident fathers as financial providers.
But from his extensive research, Ronald B. Mincy, a Columbia University professor of social policy and social work practice, believes more can be done to improve the quality of interactions between these fathers and their children, which could have a positive impact on children’s intellectual, social and emotional development beyond just their fathers’ money.
“What we know is that fathers who … learn how to provide quality interactions with their children, their children are better off in terms of their behavior, in terms of their academic achievement and so on,” Mincy said during a presentation in the Hinckley Center on the Brigham Young University campus Feb. 9.
Mincy traveled to the Provo, Utah, campus as the featured presenter at this year’s 19th Annual Lecture of the Marjorie Pay Hinckley endowed chair in social work and the social sciences.
Mincy, who has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one of the principal investigators of “The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study,” formerly known as “The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study,” which has followed 5,000 children born between 1998 and 2000, as well as their mothers and fathers, for the past 22 years.
“The purpose of the study is to figure out how the circumstances of the parents and the circumstances of the policies under which those parents function, or the circumstances of the community in which they live, how do those things influence children’s development,” Mincy said.
Mincy’s research has zeroed in on nonresident fathers, which is a growing population.
“We are spending billions of dollars to collect child support that most nonresident fathers cannot pay and ignoring the other things that they can do to benefit their children,” Mincy said in a BYU press release. “The question on my mind is, if we took some of the money we spend on collecting child support and instead developed engaged nonresident fathers in parenting programs, would the benefits to children be better?”
Why talk about nonresident fathers?
In 1954, men married on average at age 23 and women at 20 years old. Today, those ages are closer to 29 and 27. At the same time, the proportion of young people getting married is falling.
“Marriage has become a luxury good,” Mincy said.
Young people are more likely to get married if they meet three criteria: They believe they are going to have a secure income, that they are going to have little or no debt and that they have secure employment, Mincy explained. The people most likely to meet those credentials are those with college degrees.
In 2016, 68% of women with a college degree were married, 45% of women who had a high school diploma were married, but only 27% of women who had less education than a high school diploma were married.
However, just because people are not getting married does not mean they are not forming families and having children, Mincy said. Births to cohabitating couples have increased dramatically in recent decades.
From 2011 to 2013, women without a high school diplomas accounted for 68% of nonmarital births while women with a college degree accounted for only 11% of nonmarital births.
When he began his work 30 years ago, Mincy said, this was mainly true among African Americans and Latinos, but now it is true for the general population.
“I think this is becoming a challenge that everyone should care about, if we care about children,” he said.
In what sociologists call a homogeny in coupling — where people tend to couple with people who are like them — the men in these cohabitating relationships tend to be men who also do not have a college degree.
Cohabitating couples are also much more likely to break up within one to five years than married couples. “It’s obviously very difficult for these less educated women to support their children on a single income. However, the fathers ... of their children, are also low skilled.”
Mincy noted that the average hourly earnings of most men without a college degree has flatlined since the mid 1970s. “That’s really pretty distressing and therefore we’re having an increasing number of nonresident fathers who are having difficulty supporting their children and difficulty meeting their child support obligations as well.”
Why focus on child support?
“The child support program is a big deal in the United States,” Mincy said.
The Office of Child Support Enforcement collected nearly $30 billion in 2019 with a caseload of 13.6 million.
The formal child support system is costly but much needed for low-income families. In 2017, 43% of poor families were dependent on income received through the formal child support system.
Mincy explained, however, that informal support, rather than payments received from the formal system, is much more common among nonresident fathers, meaning these mothers and fathers come to an informal arrangement about how the father will help support the child.
“Most child support payments paid within the first year of a child’s life are informal,” he said.
Prior studies about informal support have shown an association between fathers who paid above the median in informal support and their children having better cognitive skills and reduced food insecurity.
However, in many instances, these are men who have lived with the mother and child but within three to five years the couple separates. They come to an informal agreement about the father’s financial support but circumstances change, the father stops making payments and the mother then enters the formal system.
One of the shortcomings of prior studies on the impact of income on children’s development is the studies have not accounted for the transition from informal to formal support while children are still young, Mincy said.
The child well-being study
One item Mincy’s study has examined is associations between formal and informal financial support from nonresident fathers and outcomes in middle childhood.
The outcomes measured were the child’s reading and math scores on standardized tests and the child’s aggressive behavior score at age 9. The study also looked at mediating variables, or the mechanism from which financial support would impact a child’s outcomes — questions such as: Are there learning materials in the home or can they afford books and toys or other learning materials? Do the mother and father participate in learning activities such as singing songs, reading, etc.? Is there food insecurity? Does greater income impact the mother’s stress level, responsiveness or ability to positively discipline instead of harshly discipline?
It also looked at a child’s reflective vocabulary at age 5.
Of all possible pathways through which increases in financial support affect children, only one was found to be statistically significant, Mincy said. “From the dollars that the father paid to the child’s receptive vocabulary at year 5, which in turn influenced a child’s academic achievement at year 9 in both math and reading … and that was only if a father paid at the highest level.”
Whether fathers paid in the 75th percentile, the median or less made no difference in the child’s outcomes. When a father gave at a high level, it impacted a child’s academic performance but not social or emotional development.
However, fathers who provided money also tended to be more engaged in the child’s life. Unfortunately, this engagement did not impact the child’s well-being. In other words, although the fathers were trying to engage with their children, they didn’t know what to do to improve their child’s well-being, Mincy said.
To illustrate, Mincy used the example of his 5-year-old grandson, Emmanuel or “Man.”
“I can teach him anything if it’s through a dinosaur,” Mincy observed. Man’s favorite book to read with his granddad is “Tiny T-Rex and the Very Dark Dark.”
Mincy said he’s learned, despite his busy schedule, to spend time with his grandson and get down on his level. During a recent visit, as Mincy was trying to prepare for his presentation, he stopped to play Tiny T-Rex in the basement with Man. They turned off the lights and hid from “gnomies,” which are the glowing eyes in the dark in the book.
“Man’s imagination is just exploding around Tiny T-Rex,” Mincy said. Eventually they built a tent out of a tarp stretched across a weight bench to hide in like Tiny T-Rex does in the book.
Their play only lasted about 15 minutes because Man’s attention span is small, Mincy said, but those type of interactions are important to a child’s development.
But how do you persuade a 21-year-old nonresident father working the swing shift that he needs to be involved with his child in his or her Tiny T-Rex or whatever else ignites imagination? Mincy asked. How do you teach the father who’s rearranged his late-night work schedule to visit the child that even though his child might not seem interested in the book they’re reading together, there is bonding going on and the child is still learning important things?
Study results suggest federal and state efforts to collect child support particularly from low-income fathers may be misplaced, Mincy said. More attention needs to be given to how financial arrangements could be reconfigured to also improve relationships of fathers with their children and the quality of their interactions for the child’s well-being.
Other studies have shown that children of fathers who participate in programs such as Head Start or Early Head Start, which provide comprehensive early childhood education to low-income families, have improved children’s outcomes, such as improved language skills and mathematics readiness.
“What we should be doing is marrying [nonresident fathers’] financial obligations to their children with helping them learn how to effectively read and be otherwise engaged with their children,” Mincy concluded.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEnJ%2BuqpOdu6bD0meaqKVfoba3tc2gZJ%2BZmam1cH6Pa2poal9mgnB%2Bkm9namhhZnyku8uupJuhkWK%2Fpr%2FEmqmcoJWnerO7zZqjnWWSYrqqusKyZKudpJ22r7eMqaybpJmYerG7y6KasmWRl7y2wIynpqeqlai2pbHNrWSfmaSdsrO%2F