For any system to present itself as powerful, righteous, or heroic, it must have an opposing threat. For child support, that’s not systemic inequity or structural poverty; it’s fathers cast as deadbeats. As absentees. As villains with faulty moral compasses. And once that narrative is set, everything else follows.

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

August is Child Support Awareness Month, a time when states, agencies, and advocates shine a light on the critical role child support can play in children’s lives. But this month should also be a time for deeper reflection. Beyond the statistics and press releases, there’s a harder truth: The system we’ve built runs on a narrative that demands a villain.

When we think of child support, we often envision fairness, responsibility, and the legal framework designed to ensure children receive the financial care their parents owe them. We may see systems as neutral, policies as structural, and courts as guardians. However, underlying these ideals is a darker narrative, and it revolves around one figure: the villain.

I’ve asked dozens of people — during forums, conferences, and advisory sessions — this question: If child support had a villain, who would it be? Without hesitation, nearly all of them have the same answer: fathers, a jarring testament to how ingrained and unchallenged the narrative is.

I start here because the notion of villainy isn’t just collateral. It is the anchor. For any system to present itself as powerful, righteous, or heroic, it must have an opposing threat. For child support, that’s not systemic inequity or structural poverty; it’s fathers cast as deadbeats. As absentees. As villains with faulty moral compasses. And once that narrative is set, everything else follows.

The Villain Across 13.2 Million Stories

In fiscal year 2021, according to the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA), the U.S. child support program served 13.2 million children — roughly one in five across the country — while collecting a staggering $32.7 billion across 12.7 million cases. Those are the headlines, but behind them lie stories of parents caught in survival mode and systems that mandate payment while offering minimal support.

The program began in 1975 as part of a federal-state partnership whose original purpose was not primarily to support children, but to recover welfare costs from noncustodial parents (overwhelmingly fathers) whose children were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). After AFDC expanded to more Black families in the 1960s, it became the target of a political and cultural backlash that reshaped child support policy. By the 1980s, this backlash fused with media narratives amplifying the image of the “deadbeat dad” — often portrayed as Black, irresponsible, and morally suspect. This was not accidental. It was a political choice rooted in America’s racial history.

Each of the 13.2 million children served by child support has a story. Many involve mothers struggling to make ends meet and juggling jobs, housing, and childcare. One critical lifeline is child support. In 2021, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, around 4.1 million parents received cash payments, with an average of $441 per month. However, according to USA Facts, 30% of those owed child support receive nothing, and only about 46-54% receive the full amount due, with the rest getting partial or no payments.

The child support program can be a lifeline — lifting hundreds of thousands of people above the poverty line — and yet it is perceived as punitive, adversarial, and wrapped in blame. And that’s because its narrative made fathers the villain.

Constructing the “Deadbeat Dad”

Society’s hunger for a villain transforms quibbling into moral necessity and complexity into caricature. Phrases like “deadbeat dad” keep this narrative alive, suggesting that fathers evade their rightful duty, but data tells a more nuanced story.

In California, for example, one report indicates that 76% of $14 billion in child support arrears were owed by parents who lacked the ability to pay. These “villains” often had median annual incomes of just $6,349, with default child support orders of $300 per month (with many orders issued under default because fathers weren’t even informed).

Elsewhere, an Urban Institute study uncovered that 2.5 million nonresident fathers owed support but were poor themselves. These dads had work barriers that were similar to those of custodial mothers, yet they had fewer supports and opportunities. And for every poor nonpaying father, there were nearly two nonpoor dads who also didn’t pay.

In-kind contributions are excluded from this accounting. Many fathers still provide groceries, clothes, and school items. A study cited by TIME Magazine found 46% of low-income, noncustodial fathers gave in-kind support, compared to just 23% adhering strictly to court-ordered cash payments, and that these contributions averaged $60 worth of assistance per child monthly. 

This goes unrecognized by the system. The narrative sees a villain, not a father struggling to survive, often hoping to remain connected.

A Justice System Without Empathy for Fathers

Child support asks for compliance but delivers contempt. Weapons in the punitive arsenal include arrests, license suspensions, and wage garnishment. Some states garnish up to 50% of pre-tax income; others treat nonpayment as a criminal offense, warranting jail terms. 

The politics of the 1980s, including high-profile media spectacles like CBS’s The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America, fueled the legislative drive to punish nonpayment. The Bradley Amendment of 1986, passed amid this climate, banned judicial discretion on child support arrears. Payments became automatically non-waivable, regardless of a parent’s ability to pay. Meanwhile, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996) tethered child support to welfare, requiring custodial recipients to assign support to the state, making children a repayment mechanism for benefits.

Supreme Court decisions, like Turner v. Rogers, underscore that rigid orders without the ability to pay are counterproductive. Court rulings affirm that incarceration is inappropriate for indigent parents and that realistic orders based on income heighten compliance.

Yet systems continue grinding, focusing on collection over rehabilitation and enforcement over empathy.

The Toll of Labeling Fathers as Villains

When you label someone a villain, you give yourself the license to punish. But no policy, technology, or enforcement measure exists in a vacuum. There’s always a human at the center.

The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) says low-income fathers forced into arrears typically earn below $10,000 annually, and three-quarters of fathers owing over $30,000 in arrears fall into this low-income category.

These debts act like sandbags on a father’s ability to find housing, steady employment, or even parenting space. Credit scores deteriorate. Housing stability is threatened. Imprisonment for nonpayment further isolates fathers — and by extension, their children — much like a modern form of institutionalized economic exclusion.

The racialized origins of the system ensure that these burdens fall most heavily on Black fathers, who face higher unemployment rates, greater barriers to stable housing, and disproportionate surveillance from child support enforcement.

The narrative of the father as villain has real consequences. It impedes programmatic investment in fathers. Advocates fight for fair policies, but often the villain narrative dominates the discourse. Funds go toward enforcement, surveillance, and tech rather than job placements, parenting education, or holistic support services.

Whose Story Gets Told?

Policy conversations keep happening in silos. Child welfare entities discuss safety. Fatherhood advocates discuss access. Child support workers focus on the check. Rarely do these conversations intersect. The father-as-villain narrative fits neatly in every silo’s storyline while obscuring the interdependency of economic stability, access, respect, and system design.

Look at funding models: The IV-D model of child support is a federal-state structure intended to recoup welfare costs. According to NCSEA, every dollar invested yields $5.27 in collections, but that calculus ignores long-term family stability. Its logic is rooted in cost recovery, not child-centered support.

When fathers are the villain, public empathy wanes. Philanthropy follows the narrative: Mothers and children mobilize sympathy and resources. Fathers rarely get funding for engagement. Not even advocacy. At one point, I said that fathers get less charitable giving than trees. The narrative deletes fathers from the conversation’s moral center.

Child Support Needs Actors, Not Villains

Recasting the narrative is not denying enforcement but reframing it. We must see child support as a shared societal project, not a judgment. And we must stop making poor fathers the villain.

Justice requires nuance. It means enabling legal modifications when a payor’s circumstances change, rather than imposing sanctions. It means treating incarcerated fathers with procedural fairness. For example, Pasqua v. Council held that indigent parents facing incarceration must have legal counsel, a principle broader courts should adopt.

Justice means recognizing non-monetary fatherhood. It means redefining “support” to include time, connection, and in-kind contributions, especially for low-income fathers who cannot produce cash but do produce love.

It means dismantling the welfare cost-recovery logic — pushing all support to families, not governments. It means refocusing funding from punitive enforcement to support services: job training, mental health, housing, and parenting classes.

Research shows that compliance improves when obligations are realistic (15–20% of income, not more) and when fathers have employment stability.

Let’s Reimagine Child Support

Child support won’t succeed if it pits villains against heroes. Instead, it must build a stage where parents — and systems — assume shared roles. If fathers continue to be cast as villains, the system will continue punishing its most vulnerable actors while hollowing out its integrity.

The villain must go. Not to exonerate shirkers but to clear space for justice, empathy, and collective responsibility.

Part Two of this conversation is next: How do we reframe enforcement, rebuild systems, and redefine the societal narrative?