Gendered and cultural moral rationalities: Pacific mothers’ pursuit of child support money

IntroductionA key rationale for the development of child support policies in liberal welfare states, such as Aotearoa/New Zealand, during the late 1980s and early 1990s was and remains improving the economic and social well-being of sole-parent families (Baker, 2008). Child support policies1 emerged in a historical context characterised by (a) rising numbers of sole-parent families, (b) a system of child maintenance that relied on expensive civil litigation and produced unpredictable outcomes, and (c) a shift in state governance from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, with its associated effort to offset the cost of welfare provisions by re-privatising childrearing costs through a re-emphasis on the family obligation to financially provide for dependants (Fraser, 1989). Child support policies were additionally developed in a changing landscape of gender relations. Hence, they were articulated in gender-neutral terms, requiring non-resident parents - father or mother - to financially contribute to their children's upbringing through a payment to the resident parent - again, either mother or father. However, given that parenting remains gendered, with fathers making up the vast majority of non-resident parents and mothers the majority of resident parents (Elizabeth, 2016), child support policies differentially affect men and women. It is therefore understandable that a great deal of child support literature adopts a gendered lens (e.g., Cook & Natalier, 2013; Natalier, 2012; Natalier & Hewitt, 2010, 2014; Smyth & Weston, 2005). Such research reveals, for example, that discontent with child support schemes is gendered, with fathers as payers being dissatisfied with both the amount of their child support liabilities and their lack of control over the use of payments, and mothers being unhappy about the low rate of child support they receive relative to the actual costs of raising children as well as low collection and enforcement rates (Cook & Natalier, 2013; Smyth & Weston, 2005; St John & Fletcher, 2011). Despite the significance of and ongoing need for research that adopts a critical gender lens on child support policies, the analysis contained within this literature is ethnocentric: normative ideas about family structure, the organisation of gender relations, and the nature and scope of family obligations that more closely approximate the lives of White, middle-class families tend to be the literature's starting, and often unspoken, assumption. What is left unexamined therefore are the issues and challenges that surround child support schemes for ethnic minorities, many of whom adhere to a more extended family structure and hold different assumptions about moral obligations to provide care and financial support for family members. The absence of any exploration of the way ethnicity and gender shape interpretations of, reactions to, and experiences with child support schemes is especially perplexing when the multi-cultural nature of the populations of Anglo-Western countries, including Aotearoa/New Zealand, is acknowledged.In Aotearoa/New Zealand, Pacific people2 are an important ethnic minority that make up 7.4% of the total population according to the 2013 Census (Statistics New Zealand, 2014). Within Pacific cultures, 'family' remains an extended structure comprising multiple generations, often including aunts, uncles, and cousins (Barcham, 2005; Grattan, 2004; Stewart-Withers, Scheyvens, & Fairbairn-Dunlop, 2010). That an extended family structure remains prevalent among Pacific peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand is reflected in the relatively high percentage of those of Pacific ethnicity living in multi-generational households, which sits at 36% compared with 12% for the total population (Statistics New Zealand, 2014). 3 The implications of an extended family structure stretch beyond living circumstances to include normative expectations about financial obligations to kin (Cahn, 2008). …