MAINTAINING AND CREATING TIES BETWEEN PARENTS

One significant factor that has shaped government policies toward parenting after separation around the world has been the issue of financial support for children. Child support has become enormously significant in tying together the fortunes of mothers and fathers in the enduring family, and in this dimension, more than any other, government is deeply involved in maintaining the indissolubility of parenthood. For this reason, child support has been called the “new coparenting”. Whereas once, governments were persuaded, under the tutelage of the Church, to keep marriages together through laws prohibiting or restricting divorce, now the focus is on the need to keep families together after separation, at least in a financial sense. This indissolubility of parenthood arises whether or not they were ever married or even lived together, and whether or not a parent sees the children. Huge efforts are now made to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that nonresident parents meet their obligations, at least if the parent can be traced and has an income or savings against which a child support liability can be enforced. Around the western world, considerable government expenditure is incurred in that effort.

This change has been a response to the massive growth in the number of one-parent families. This growth has occurred not only as a consequence of the rise in divorce rates following the no-fault divorce revolution, but also because of the huge increase in the numbers of children born outside marriage in western countries.