Litigating Relationships: Gendered Conflicts in Child Support Court

• In Event: 3149 - Constructing Gender

Abstract

When parents terminate their romantic relationship with one another, continued interaction can be conflict-ridden, especially when relationship wounds are still fresh. Because a child creates a continued link between them, parents often must continue to communicate with one another, bargaining and hashing out accommodations with respect to financial and care responsibilities for children. Child support represents an interesting case in the post-separation family, as it is a legal set of obligations that bind nonresident parents to their children, and—by extension—to their ex-partners. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 29 divorced or never-married parents, this paper looks at how the child support enforcement system is marshaled in relationship conflicts between separated mothers and fathers. Opening a child support order and filing a child support enforcement action were each seen as tools that custodial parents could wield in settling relationship conflicts. However, noncustodial fathers and custodial mothers differed in their rationales behind the use of these tools, and the ease and effectiveness with which they could be used. Within a racially diverse group of mostly poor and working-class mothers and fathers, a range of sometimes contradictory power dynamics can land parents who don’t pay in jail.

Author

• Elizabeth Cozzolino, University of Texas-Austin