This reliance on private support from parents, rather than universal public programs, means that investments into children vary by family socio-economic status. Policy decisions play a particularly strong role in shaping how much money and parents' time is invested in children in low-income families. Welfare reforms of the 1990s reduced low-income families' financial stability and work requirements mean that mothers spend less time with their children. Concurrent reforms in the child support enforcement system have also shaped both who provides support for children (mothers, fathers or others) and may indirectly affect parents' time and emotional involvement with children. These social welfare policy concerns suggest that the social work knowledge base should include information about who invests how much in children—and how policy shapes these investments.

The four papers in this symposium examine investments made by public programs, mothers, fathers, and children themselves. The first paper examines the role that public assistance (cash grants and in-kind assistance), child support payments, and kin support play in the economic lives of low-income mothers. This qualitative analysis is complemented by the second paper, which draws on nationally representative survey data and shows that formal child support enforcement means that non-resident parents provide less informal support. The third paper expands the focus beyond financial contributions in examining fathers' involvement with children in terms of engagement with childrearing activities, fathers' emotional support of children's mothers and through financial contributions. The final paper discusses how children themselves play an active role in shaping both their families' economic well-being (through housework and sibling care that helps parents keep jobs) and the resources they get (through making demands for goods or parents' attention).

These studies, drawing from different data sets and using multiple methods, will advance our understanding of how well—or how poorly—we collectively support healthy child development. The discussant, a Texas-based practitioner with three decades of human services and child support enforcement experience, will comment on the contributions of these papers to social welfare policy and practice.