On Child Support

From The Wall Street Journal:

With little public attention, the Obama administration has been changing America’s child-support enforcement. The most recent Census Bureau report found that in 2011 fewer than 50% of single mothers had child-support orders—down from almost 60% in 2003. At least part of this decline reflects the administration’s shifting the focus from helping single parents with children toward helping absent parents who say they can’t afford payments. This is good news for delinquents, but bad news for children already coping with not having two parents at home.

Making absent parents (usually fathers) provide financial help for their children used to have bipartisan support and plenty of media attention. Begun in 1975 and strengthened by the 1996 welfare reform, child-support enforcement is one of the few antipoverty programs that stresses personal responsibility over government dependency. State child-support enforcement agencies—with federal funding—use wage garnishments and other techniques to hold absent parents responsible for contributing financially to the care of their children.

Read more here.