Is the child support system outdated and in need of an overhaul?

The child support system has become a means for single mons to increase their income. Most spend that money on themselves and are still on the welfare system.

In the 1950s & 1960s when divorce became a common occurrence, those women had never worked and applied for government assistance. Child support laws were created in the 70's to ease the government's welfare expenses.

50 years later, the working world is more equalized and women can support a family on their own. .

Article from 2015, 10 years ago: talking about the failing CS system
https://www.npr.org/2015/11/19/456632896/how-u-s-parents-racked-up-113-billion-in-child-support-debt

How America's Child Support System Failed To Keep Up With The Times

quote:

---

When the U.S. child support collection system was set up in 1975 under President Gerald Ford — a child of divorce whose father failed to pay court-ordered child support — the country, and the typical family, looked very different from today.

And as the nation's social, economic and demographic landscape has shifted, the system has struggled to keep up. Cynthia Osborne, director of the Child and Family Research Partnership and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs, explains how these changes have outpaced the decades-old system — and left the country with more than $113 billion in unpaid child support.

---

quote:

---

The whole system was set up in a way to try to bring back what the nuclear family looked like prior to a divorce, and nearly everyone who entered into the child support system was a product of divorce. There were very few nonmarital births at that time.

During that time period, divorce was one of the single greatest predictors that a woman, especially a woman with children, would fall into poverty. The research indicated that fathers typically gained financially following a divorce, even though they were ordered to pay child support, and mothers typically lost financially, they had both the children and reduced income. And so the child support system was hoping to try to offset some of that.

---

quote:

---

It really can't be overstated how important in the whole welfare reform debate [it] was that one of the fastest entrants into the labor market were women with children under the ages of 5. And it became harder and harder to justify that we should have a system that would support one group of women to stay at home with their children while this other group of women was choosing to enter into the labor market.

---

quote:

---

And with child support, by the mid-1990s when all of these reforms were being put into place, nonmarital childbearing had risen from being something that was not very pervasive to nearly one-third of all births, 25 to 28 percent. Now, it's at 41 to 42 percent.

---

The child support system we have seems kind of outdated to me.. Both parents are responsible for the child equally. Why should one pay extra? I get gas, food, etc., but you’re a parent too. You shouldn’t stop being financially responsible for your kid. I just think there’s a simpler, fairer way to do things.