The fourth goal of PRWORA emphasizes provisions to promote marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing, and encourage parental responsibility for their children. The law requires teenage welfare recipients to attend school and live with their parents or other responsible adults. PRWORA also allows states to institute a "family cap" that denies additional benefits to families in which more children were born while the families were receiving assistance. States that succeed in reducing non-marital births will receive monetary bonuses.

Existing initiatives have focused on child support enforcement and father involvement. Although there is a growing interest in other programs to support fathers such as a child support income tax credit and more work supports, there is little evidence to indicate how these programs might help fathers and their families.

Additional Resources on Child/Family Policy

Selected Findings in Brief

Parents Fair Share (MDRC):

• Parents' Fair Share was designed to help non-custodial fathers of children on welfare who owe child support to (1) find more stable and better-paying jobs; (2) pay child support on a consistent basis; and (3) assume a fuller and more responsible fathering role. Key services included peer support, employment and training services, and voluntary mediation between custodial and non-custodial parents.
• The typical low-income noncustodial father is not a "deadbeat": Many of the men in PFS provided some sort of support for their children but, many owed more than they could pay.
  
• As a group, the fathers were very disadvantaged, although some were able to find low-wage work fairly easily. PFS increased employment and earnings for the least-employable men but not for the men who were more able to find work on their own.
• Men referred to the PFS program paid more child support than men in the control group.
  
• The study also found that many fathers provide informal support to their children and that pressuring them to provide more support through the formal child support system reduces levels of informal support.
• PFS did not generally change fathers' level of involvement with their children, but it did increase involvement among those who were least involved initially.
• Most fathers in PFS expressed a desire to be involved in their children's lives, and many were quite involved already. But many saw their own economic security as a precursor to playing a greater role in their children's lives.
  

Fragile Families (Fragile Families Research Team):

• The Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study involved a sample of low-income, unmarried couples in two urban areas (Austin, Texas, and Oakland, California), at the time of an out-of-wedlock birth.
• 82 percent of unmarried mothers and fathers were romantically involved with each other, 44 percent were cohabiting, and 99.8 percent of the fathers expressed a desire to be involved in raising their children in the coming years.
• 93 percent of the mothers in this sample reported at the time of the child's birth they wanted the father to be involved with the child.
• Thus far, fragile families initiatives have been reluctant to integrate a marriage message into their programs. Instead, most fragile families programs concentrate on helping cohabiting couples strengthen their relationship. Supporters of these programs argue that what is important is the involvement of the father, not the marital status of the parents.