Text

theses

Currently there are just under 7 million custodial parents with formal child support orders in the child support system which serves approximately 22 million children or more than one in four in the United States. While these orders regulate the ways that non-custodial parents financially support their children, child support payments and related involvement with the system do much more than impact household finances. Scholars have long explored the effects of child support system involvement both on relationships between custodial and non-custodial parents and between non-custodial parents and their children. Others have examined the impact of financial and criminal justice related collateral consequences. The ways that parents experience and navigate the system has also been a main area of study, with recent literature primarily focusing on low-income non-custodial fathers. To date, however, no work has explored the experience of child support system involvement from inside the system, specifically in the courtroom and enforcement agencies. As a result, the literature is missing a direct analysis of interactions between parents and staff, as well as the bureaucratic mechanisms of enforcement.
In this project, I use ethnographic data from a system in Virginia to examine the implications of child support system involvement for parenthood and family. I conducted observations of approximately 300 support hearings and 75+ hours in child support related sites. I also conducted 50 formal and informal interviews with parents and individuals working in the system (i.e. judges, mediators, attorneys, and enforcement staff), as well as an analysis of a diverse collection of cultural artifacts (i.e. federal, state, and municipal statutes; news articles and video clips; and political rhetoric). I use a cognitive sociological framework to analyze the data, focusing on symbolic systems of meaning, cultural norms, (in)attention, and filters of perception and relevance.
My findings illuminate the collateral consequences of enforcement, the ways that stigma and shame are pervasive in social interactions, and how parents both resist and reinforce the system’s bureaucratic apparatus. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the child support system functions as a massive neoliberal state intervention into the family situated at the intersection of the welfare and criminal justice systems which reinforces cultural messages about deservingness, morality, responsibility, and the desirability of traditional family structures.

ETD_9727

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-cmnf-zs22

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.