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Family Structure in the United States

Pamela J. Smock

The following is excerpted from Pamela J. Smock's article, "Cohabitation in the United States: An Appraisal of Research Themes, Findings, and Implications," published in the August Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 26 (2000). Dr. Smock's article is a review of published research studies of cohabitation in the United States. The implications of the research findings on cohabitation's effect on marital stability and children's well-being make this an article of interest to and importance for the child support community.

Unmarried cohabitation has increased sharply in recent years in the United States. It has in fact become so prevalent that the majority of marriages and remarriages now begin as cohabiting relationships, and most younger men and women cohabit at some point in their lives. The percentage of marriages preceded by cohabitation rose from about 10 percent for those marrying between 1965 and 1974 to over 50 percent for those marrying between 1990 and 1994.

A large body of literature has established that family structure has important effects on children.

For most couples, cohabitation is a rather short-lived experience with most ending it either by terminating the relationship or by marrying within a few years.

Cohabitation is not a childless state. About one-half of previously-married cohabitors and 35 percent of never-married cohabitors have children in the household.

Cohabitation is just one component of a constellation of longer-term changes occurring in the United States. Scholars emphasize various aspects [cultural, economic, and sexual] of long-term social change to explain cohabitation.

How does cohabitation affect marital stability?

Premarital cohabitation tends to be associated with lower marital quality and to increase the risk of divorce, even after taking account of variables known to be associated with divorce.

Two main explanations have been posed to explain the association. The first refers to the idea that people who cohabit before marriage differ in important ways from those who do not, and these ways increase the likelihood of marital instability. The second explanation is that there is something about cohabitation itself, i.e., the experience of cohabitation, that increases the likelihood of marital disruption above and beyond one's characteristics at the start of the cohabitation. Through cohabitation people learn about and come to accept the temporary nature of relationships, and in particular that there are alternatives to marriage.

Axinn & Thornton (1992) examine whether the experience of cohabitation between the ages of 18 and 23 significantly alters young men's and women's attitudes toward marriage and divorce. They find that it does, with cohabitation changing people's attitudes in ways that make them more prone to divorce.

How does cohabitation affect children?

Only a small proportion of children [3.5 percent] live in cohabiting households at any one point in time. However, the proportion of children who will ever live in a cohabiting household during childhood is estimated to be a substantial 40 percent, underscoring the importance of understanding the effects of parental cohabitation on children.

Axinn & Thornton (1992) find that cohabitation [changes] people's attitudes in ways that make them more prone to divorce.

Past studies have identified two important issues regarding children's experience of parental cohabitation. The first is that children already disadvantaged in terms of parental income and education are relatively more likely to experience this family form. Second, children experiencing parental cohabitation are also more likely to undergo further transitions in family structure. Most children who are born or ever live in a cohabiting family will experience a change in family structure within a few years.

These findings do not bode well for children's well-being. A large body of literature has established that family structure has important effects on children, with deleterious ones for children who grow up without both biological parents.

There is evidence that the number of changes in family structure is particularly important. The fewer the changes, the better for children. To date, however, we have very little direct knowledge about the possible effects of cohabitation on various aspects of children's well-being relative to other family structures.

Children disadvantaged in terms of parental income and education are relatively more likely to experience [cohabitation and] more likely to undergo further transitions in family structure findings [that] do not bode well for children's well-being.

A study by Thomson & colleagues (1998) is an important exception. Using the National Survey of Families and Households, they examine the impact of a single mother's entrance in either a cohabitation or a remarriage on mothering behaviors. They generally find few differences in the effects of the two union types. The authors note, however, that small sample size precludes conclusive interpretation.

A copy of Dr. Smock's paper can be downloaded from: http://soc.AnnualRevews.org/.This excerpt printed with permission of the author.

Pamela J. Smock is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan.

HHS Awards New Grants for Innovative Child Support Enforcement Projects

In July, HHS/OCSE awarded more than $600,000 in new grants to states, nonprofit organizations, and a district court to further strengthen the nation's child support enforcement program.

"These grants will test fresh and effective means to improve the overall well-being of children and families," said Secretary Shalala.

The grants provide opportunities to test new methods to improve child support enforcement services and form new partnerships to promote responsible parenthood.

"These projects can help us move the program in new directions to help parents become better providers for their children and to ensure that child support innovations will bring additional resources to America's children." ... OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross

State Grants

• Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) will use new technology to reduce undistributed collections
• West Virginia will create a new secure web site to allow other states access to critical information to improve timely disbursement of child support collections
• Texas will build a new communications network to connect with Mexico to facilitate faster processing of cases, including hearings over video and audio conferences and
• New Jersey's medical support project will establish cooperative agreements and better collaborations with state health agencies to increase health insurance coverage for children.

Nonprofit Grants

The three grants to nonprofit organizations are designed to help parents provide reliable and regular child support.

• The Eighth Judicial District Court in Las Vegas will implement a drug court program where noncustodial parents will be referred to substance abuse screening and treatment
• Ecumenical Child Care Network's "Resources for Families" project will forge new collaborations among houses of worship, welfare agencies, early childhood, and other community programs to share information on child support requirements in four cities: Chicago; Richmond, Virginia; Seattle; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• The Women's Law Center will bring together providers and advocates to develop model program ideas to help low-income young fathers and mothers as well as recommendations on updating and modifying child support orders.

"National efforts to improve child support services often begin with creative state and local projects," said Olivia A. Golden, HHS Assistant Secretary for Children and Families.

"These projects can help us move the program in new directions to help parents become better providers for their children and to ensure that child support innovations will bring additional resources to America's children," added OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross.

The grant recipients by project area are:

Washington State Receives Recognition for Automation

Jon Conine

Washington State's Division of Child Support was recently recognized for having the first information technology system in the nation to be certified for meeting the requirements of federal welfare reform legislation.

Division Director Meg Sollenberger accepted the recognition award and attributed the accomplishment to the State's in-house information technology staff.

"Our staff know child support, they know the system, and above all, they know technology," she said. "The funding spent on this project was money well spent."

A total of $1.2 million in State and federal funds was spent on new technology and automation tools mandated by PRWORA. The Division expects to collect almost $50 million more this year in child support payments, much of that as a result of the new technology.

SEMS has facilitated increased collections by providing electronic links with other agencies. . . . Last year, Washington State received almost $20 million in payments as a result of this effort.

The primary tool is the Support Enforcement Management System (SEMS), a case management program with over 2,000 work stations in 47 locations around the State, linked by a wide area network. The SEMS program stores and manages information on each of the State's 350,000 child support cases.

SEMS has facilitated increased collections by providing electronic links with other agencies for initiatives such as license suspension, which allows the State to suspend driver and professional licenses of parents delinquent in child support payments. Last year, Washington State received almost $20 million in payments as a result of this effort.

"Being recognized as the first State to meet the PRWORA system requirements is a great honor," Sollenberger said, "but systems development is a continuous process. We need to continue to incorporate the fast-paced advances in technology which enable us to collect more child support for more of our State's children."

Jon Conine is Project Manager of SEMS.

In Connecticut: Joint Information and Problem Resolution

The Child Support Information and Problem Resolution Unit (IPRU) in Connecticut is a joint effort between the Judicial Branch and the Department of Social Services. The Unit is staffed by support enforcement specialists (Child Support Advocates) who have significant field experience, and whose function is to analyze, evaluate, and trouble-shoot child support cases that cannot be resolved by the field offices.

IPRU acts as a mechanism to improve customer service and make a multi-agency program more understandable to the public.

In addition, the IPRU acts as a mechanism to improve customer service and make a multi-agency program more understandable to the public. The national toll-free child support help-line number is 1-800-228-KIDS. The help-line is staffed from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday. Letters can be faxed to (860) 566-2452, or mailed to the Information and Problem Resolution Unit, 999 Asylum Avenue, 4th floor, Hartford, CT 06105.

This information is reprinted with permission from The Child Support Guide, published by The Connecticut Department of Social Services, March 2000.

Performance Management Pays Off for Tennessee

Improved Productivity, Accuracy

In January 1999, managers at Child Support Services of Davidson County, Tennessee (Nashville) took stock of their caseload of 66,000 cases. If they were to meet federal performance standards and obtain maximum federal incentive payments, they realized that the federal standards had to be converted into actions to be taken at the individual worker level.

Though there were office-wide data to measure performance, there were no standards against which to assess the performance of individual workers or track their improvement. Managers needed better tools to measure performance, reward good work, and counsel workers when necessary.

"Everybody works better when they know what is expected of them." ... Tennessee State employee

The solution: develop a performance management system for the entire agency based on the federal performance standards of paternities established, cases with support orders, current support collected versus support due, cases with arrears payments owing, and medical support. The plan: work steadily toward meeting those standards on an agency-wide basis by creating goals for every worker and measuring them monthly.

Standards were developed for production, as well as accuracy. Production standards for individual workers were measures of key inputs, outputs, and outcomes, with monthly goals.

To measure accuracy, five cases are pulled at random monthly from those handled by each worker and reviewed by the manager to answer three questions: Were appropriate actions taken? Were the actions taken within federal timeframes? Were they fully documented on the automated system?

Workers are given a score based on their performance on the sample cases. Those who meet their goals are recognized each month at a staff meeting and given small rewards, such as certificates or movie tickets.

Performance standards are reviewed quarterly to see if adjustments are needed and if federal performance standards are being met.

The result: productivity continues to increase steadily each month, and the agency is near to achieving its goal of a minimum accuracy rate of 90 percent. Other benefits include higher employee job satisfaction rates, fewer employee complaints, and lower turnover. As one employee said, "Everybody works better when they know what is expected of them."

For more information, contact Pam Peyton at (615) 313-4880.

Michigan Paternity Establishment Initiative

Eileen Schrauben

The Michigan Family Independence Agency's (FIA) Office of Child Support is piloting an initiative to help increase paternity establishment rates for unwed parents and to involve fathers during the mother's pregnancy. The initiative will focus on educating health care providers to be more aware of the paternity establishment process and to assist in patient education and counseling prior to delivery.

Several Michigan agencies are collaborating on this initiative. These include the Office of Child Support, the Department of Community Health, Wayne State University's School of Medicine, the Michigan Section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (OB/GYN), and the Wayne County Friend of the Court.

A survey has been developed for OB/GYN practitioners to determine their practice patterns, knowledge, and attitudes relative to paternity establishment. The results will supplement a Grand Rounds presentation (educational lecture) scheduled for late November at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit, the largest obstetric hospital in Michigan.

The presentation, by a multidisciplinary group of experts, will include many OB/GYN and Family Medicine practitioners from the greater Detroit Metropolitan area, as well as hospital medical records personnel, and will provide a forum for an in-depth discussion of current activities related to paternity establishment.

Pre and post-test documents will accompany the presentation as another means of evaluating the success of the initiative. FIA anticipates that statewide implementation will take place during 2001 via teleconferencing and on-site presentations. The program is adaptable to a national audience.

For more information, call Eileen Schrauben, at (517) 335-3921.

Eileen Schrauben is a Program Specialist with Michigan's Office of Child Support.

5th Edition of State Best Practices Available

OCSE's Compendium of State Best Practices & Good Ideas, 5th edition, is now available.

Practices profiled in the Compendium contain information that child support staff nationwide will find useful in their work. Coverage includes a description of problems addressed, information about funding and results, advice on replication, and the name of a state contact person for additional information.

If you know of programs or organizational and training practices in your area that have produced results, please tell us. Contact your ACF Regional Office CSE Program Specialist, or Myles Schlank, Chief of OCSE's Technical Assistance Branch in the Division of State and Local Assistance, at (202) 401-9329.

OCSE is pleased to give these best practices and good ideas visibility while not endorsing any particular practices. There are many ways to improve performance and no one way will necessarily serve everyone equally well.

Copies of the Compendium can be obtained electronically from OCSE's Home Page on the Internet: /ACFPrograms/CSE/

Training in Criminal Nonsupport

Training in criminal nonsupport* emphasizes a team approach. The target audience consists of representatives from U.S. Attorneys' Offices, the FBI, the HHS Office of the Inspector General, and child support enforcement.

This past Spring, OCSE's National Training Center and Division of Audit worked closely with DOJ's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys in designing a 2-day seminar. The first delivery of the seminar took place in June, at the DOJ National Advocacy Center in Coumbia, SC. OCSE central office participants included Jerry Gates, Yvette Riddick, and Amy Gober, while Bob Richie and Ann Russell represented the Atlanta Regional Office.

The seminar was an opportunity for CSE staff to learn what types of cases DOJ can prosecute and what information is needed, as well as to exchange ideas on what works and what doesn't. It included presentations on the legal requirements to prosecute cases, the referral process, and the ramifications this process has on the investigation and prosecution of criminal nonsupport cases.

Other topics included methods and resources needed to investigate such cases, victim/witness issues, charging decisions, plea negotiations, sentencing, and practical issues that arise during post-sentencing.

In partnership with OCSE, DOJ expects to conduct the seminar three more times - in October, January, and June. For more information, e-mail Yvette Riddick, Chief of OCSE's National Training Center, at yriddick@acf.dhhs.gov.

*Criminal nonsupport training includes coverage of Public Law 105-187, the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1998, which extended the Child Support Recovery Act, creating two new categories of felonies: traveling across state or country lines with the intent to evade child support payments if the obligation has remained unpaid for a period longer than one year or is greater than $5,000; and failing to pay child support to a child residing in another state when the obligation has remained unpaid for a period of longer than two years or is greater than $10,000.

International Child Support Reciprocity Update

Stephen Grant

Section 459A of the Social Security Act [42 U.S.C. 659A] authorizes the Secretary of State with the concurrence of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to declare foreign countries or their political subdivisions to be reciprocating countries for the enforcement of family support obligations if the country has or has undertaken to establish procedures to establish and enforce duties of support for residents of the U.S. at no cost.

With the participation of the Department of Health and Human Services, state IV-D representatives, and other experts, the Department of State has held negotiations with over 30 countries regarding the establishment of reciprocity, has concluded agreements with several, and is nearing completion of agreements with others.

Ireland, Poland, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, and the Canadian Provinces of Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and Manitoba have in effect federal reciprocity agreements under 42 U.S.C. 659A. On May 19, 2000, the Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State, published the first of the cumulative public notices on completed federal reciprocity agreements in the Federal Register [65 FR 31953].

Additionally, agreement in principle has been reached and most of the details completed with Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway, and Australia, and it is anticipated that these agreements will soon be effective. The U.S. Central Authority for International Child Support, established in the Office of Child Support, is available to facilitate IV-D efforts on case cooperation with these jurisdictions.

Further information on international child support enforcement generally may be found at the Department of State's webpage [http://travel.state.gov/child_support.html], or by contacting Stephen Grant at (202) 260-5943, or by email ocseinternational@acf.dhhs.gov.

Stephen Grant is Director, U.S. Central Authority for International Child Support, within OCSE.

Child Support to Celebrate Silver Anniversary

As part of OCSE's 10th National Child Support Training Conference, the Child Support Program will celebrate 25 years of helping America's children and families. We hope you will be in Baltimore with us. Mark Your Calendar!

Head Start -- Child Support Collaboration

More than 2,000 Head Start programs nationwide recently were sent a copy of the OCSE-produced videocassette, The Power of 2: Voluntarily Acknowledging Paternity.

The video is intended for use in Head Start parent education activities, particularly in tandem with inviting local child support program staff to speak at parent meetings.

Head Start programs also received bulk copies of the brochure, Child Support Services for Families in Head Start, to distribute to each family enrolled in the program for their information. These activities are further results of the ongoing collaboration between OCSE and the Head Start Bureau.