Supporting Children, Balancing Lives

Abstract

This article proceeds in three parts. Part II explains how child support formulas currently work, and why, given how inexact and inapposite they usually are, we should be eager to generate alternative models. Part III examines contemporary household arrangements. It shows where and why specialization is still the norm. In these households, it is usually mothers who caretake in return for a share of the fathers' income, while fathers pay for the right to be fathers. Part III also suggests that there are reasons to be troubled by this traditional division of labor, not the least of which is its tendency to produce very unbalanced lives. Part IV therefore suggests that the law adopt a new approach to the enforcement of traditional divisions of labor. It argues that by establishing a default rule of non-specialized parenting so that each parent is presumed to be responsible for both caretaking and providing, the law could destabilize household specialization contracts. The less stable those contracts, the more balance we are likely to achieve.