Sociologists have long recognized the importance of the family in social mobility
and in the reproduction of poverty (Featherman & Hauser 1978, McLanahan &
Sandefur 1994). More recently, they have begun to study the role of the state in
these processes (Skocpol 1992, O’Connor et al 1999). Children depend on their
parents to provide them with the resources they need to develop into healthy and
successful adults. Parents, in turn, depend on their communities and on government
to share the costs of raising children. Changes that undermine children’s claims
on parental resources or parents’ claims on public resources are likely to have
long-term negative consequences for society. As we enter the twenty-first century,
two such changes are underway—an increase in nonmarital childbearing and a
restructuring of the welfare state. Nonmarital childbearing, a trend that now affects
one of three children born in the United States, undermines children’s claims
on fathers’ resources (time and money). Welfare reform, which curtails welfare
benefits and strengthens child support enforcement, undermines the claims of poor
parents on public resources. These changes disproportionately affect families at
the lower end of the income distribution, who have the highest rates of nonmarital
childbearing