I. Overview

There were almost half a million births to teens in the United States in 1985. Today, one young woman in five becomes a mother before reaching her twentieth birthday.'

Teen mothers are three times more likely to be single parents than women who delay childbearing until their twenties and are twice as likely to divorce or separate if they do marry. They are also less likely to complete high school or go on to college. Consequently, they are much more likely to have very low incomes. In fact, young female-headed families face almost certain poverty; three out of four single mothers under the age of twenty-five live below the poverty line.2

Child support enforcement services have generally been viewed as having limited potential in improving the economic status of children of teen parents. Discussions on the subject are characterized by an even greater skepticism than that which dominates general debate about the role of child support services in strategies to help low-income families.

The underlying reasons for this attitude are clear. The first is the fact that the child support system does not serve anyone well, regardless of income or status. The second is the belief that the noncustodial parents of children in low-income families are themselves mostly poor, unemployed, or without sustained income or interest in their children and that, as a result, efforts to pursue child support are a waste of resources.

Barbara D. Savage is a senior staff attorney at the Children's Defense Fund, 122 C St., NW, Washington, DC. Funds for her work on this article were provided by the Rosenberg Foundation in conjunction with its sponsorship of a conference on Teens and Public Benefit Programs held in Washington, DC, in November 1986. Paula Roberts is a senior staff attorney with the Center for Law and Social Policy, 1616 P St., NW, Washington, DC. Funds for her work on this project were provided by the Ford Foundation. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors.

1. CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND (CDF), PREVENTING CHILDREN HAVING CHILDREN 4 (1985); see also M.W. EDELMAN, FAMILIES IN PERIL: AN AGENDA FOR SOCIAL CHANGE Ch. 3 (Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy) (1987).

2. PREVENTING CHILDREN HAVING CHILDREN, supra note 1, at 4.

Certainly the absent parent's current ability to pay affects the likelihood and extent of child support payments to any family. But this country has also never had and does not yet have a child support system capable of vigorous or effective pursuit of maximum feasible payments from absent parents at any income level. It is precisely for this reason that the full extent of potential contributions from absent fathers and the possible impact on the economic status of children in lowincome families is not yet known.3

Child support agencies work for short-term benefits so that, as a matter of practice, they assign the lowest priority to cases with the lowest potential for immediate payments. They pursue the easy cases and abandon the hard ones. These "hard" cases include those in which the children are born out of wedlock, are fathered by young fathers, or are born to teen mothers.4

Many legal services programs and other advocacy groups have accepted and internalized this attitude and approach in their own work, measuring a commitment of resources to child support enforcement against immediate, short-term gains. Further, many advocates have accorded child support enforcement the same dread and disdain reserved for most family law issues. When confronted with a system that clearly does not work, many simply walk away.

Federal reform legislation that was passed in 1984 creates an opportunity and an obligation for advocates to approach child support services differently, treating them as another public benefits program with a federal mandate and legally entitled beneficiaries. The Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 (CSEA) include important changes that are being implemented now and that hold the promise for vastly improved services and greater enforcement effectiveness for

3. A recent study, however, suggests that absent fathers can and should be paying $16 to $24 billion dollars more each year in child support than they currently do. I. GARFINKEL & D. OELERICH, NONCUSTODIAL FATHER'S ABILITY TO PAY CHILD SUPPORT 26 (Inst. for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper No. 815-86 1986). 4. See, e.g., Welfare: Reform or Replacement? Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Social Sec. & Family Policy of the Senate Comm. on Fin., 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987) (statement of Kevin Kenney, on behalf of the National Association of Counties) [hereinafter Welfare: Reform or Replacement?].