【作者】简.C.墨菲
【内容提要】
State and federal child support and welfare policies that aggressively encourage paternity establishment and focus enforcement efforts on low-income fathers have contributed to a new definition of fatherhood based exclusively on biology and economic support. This definition hurts the state, low income families, and, most especially, children. Legal fathers may be willing to maintain a formal connection with children who are at risk of becoming fatherless. But current child support policies that privilege the economic function of fatherhood above all others do not permit functional fathers to assume emotional and caretaking responsibilities without assuming full financial responsibilities under a child support regime that hurts low income fathers. Legal fathers, particularly low income obligors, must often choose between irreparably harming a child they have called their own for many years or facing financial ruin.
The legal definition of fatherhood must be broad and flexible enough to resolve paternity conflicts in ways that stabilize families and protect children. This requires rethinking the current welfare and child systems to develop policies that discourage uninformed paternity consents on the front end. And, if challenges to paternity are permitted, legislatures and courts need to define fatherhood broadly enough so that decisions about paternity disestablishment are grounded in the child's best interest at the backend. In addition, while rigorous child support enforcement policies are essential to middle and upper-income custodial parents and children, the application of these policies to low income, fragile families must be reexamined to discourage functional fathers from seeking paternity disestablishment. Creating a legal definition of fatherhood to account for the complexity of modern families is a difficult task but one that must have as its goal protecting children and preventing the loss of fathers in the