Theoretical Approaches to Fathering in Child Support Research: A Scoping Review of U.S. Studies

Background and Purpose: Over the past decades, the U.S. federal government has transformed the child support enforcement program to extend beyond enforcing child support orders and promote fathering through parenting time programs (Pearson, 2015). Nonetheless, the child support program has been notorious for its unintended, detrimental impacts on families involved in the child support system. To protect and assist these families, it is crucial that the child support policy and program are informed by research and theories that help understand non-resident fathering within complex systems and relationships these fathers operate in. Thus, this study aims to inform policy and practice by conducting a scoping review of child support studies that used theories to address fathering.

Methods: Following the PRISMA-ScR protocol, a comprehensive literature search was conducted in 14 databases (e.g., Academic Search Complete, APA PsycInfo, Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text, EconLit). Inclusion criteria were as follows: 1) peer-reviewed journal articles, 2) published between 1975 and 2025, 3) written in English, 4) within the U.S. context, 5) primarily focused on non-resident fathers’ child support, 6) addressed fathering by explicitly using theories.

Results: Out of the 649 screened studies, only 19 studies met all criteria. Among the excluded studies, 18% (n = 114) did not address fathering, 11% (n = 72) primarily focused on father involvement rather than child support, and 5% (n = 31) were child support studies that addressed fathering but did not explicitly utilize theory. Within the final set of studies, key topics discussed were child support enforcement and compliance (n = 5); sociocultural influences on fathering (n = 4); child well-being outcomes (n = 3); policy, programs, and interventions (n = 3); family structure and transitions (n = 2); and others (n = 4). Majority of studies used multiple theories to guide their studies, including fathering theories (n = 8; e.g., Pleck’s father involvement theory, Cabrera et al.’s ecological theory of father-child relationships), economic frameworks (n = 9; e.g., human capital theory, household production theory, economic utility theory), social capital theory (n = 2), and other theories (e.g., identity theory, equity theory, governmentality theory). Theories were used to explain mechanisms driving fathers’ child support payment/compliance, multiple contextual factors that impact fathering, and ways to support fatherhood.

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings demonstrate that few studies on child support address fathering, and even fewer are grounded in theory. Overall, economic frameworks were used most frequently to explain child support as an investment or transaction. Despite the development of various theories in fathering research, only nine studies in the current scoping review used fathering theories. Nonetheless, several studies were grounded in the ecological systems framework, implying the importance of understanding the complex, interwoven contexts that impact fathering. For research to inform child support policy and practice that promotes positive fathering, child support research needs to be grounded in fathering (and other theories) to address the uniqueness of non-resident fathers’ parenting. Fathering research also needs to expand its theories to help frame child support within the context of fathering theory.