Policy debates about child poverty and welfare reform, which once focused almost exclusively on single mothers and their children, have in recent years begun to train the spotlight on fathers. Fathers are important sources of financial and emotional support for their children, but noncustodial fathers with low incomes and poor job prospects often do not fulfill their parenting roles, instead accumulating child support debts that lead them to evade the child support system and to see less of their children.

An early and particularly ambitious attempt to help such men become better fathers was Parents’ Fair Share (PFS), a national demonstration project authorized by the Family Support Act of 1988. A key goal of that law was to enforce more vigorously the child support obligations of noncustodial parents, most of them fathers. Recognizing that tougher enforcement would not work for fathers who could not pay, the law allowed some states to assign such men to programs designed to help them find jobs and play a more active role in their children’s lives. The PFS demonstration tested the effectiveness of this pathbreaking approach.