Child-support payment guidelines are based on data that is 25 years old and much too low to help children. While experts grapple over what constitutes a fair amount, children measure their losses from deadbeat parents quite differently, psychologists say. They often feel anguish and shame that they aren't loved, that they are betrayed by the absent parent. They are angry and bitter over lifestyles lost. Those resentments, if not resolved, may play out in adults who have difficulty trusting anyone and who cannot or will not find work.
Children are aware they are supposed to be supported by both their parents.
Depending on their age when one parent leaves, they may feel the parent has abandoned them emotionally and financially. She shies away from serious relationships because of the tortuous relationship she had with her father, Terry Sherman, a determined deadbeat who fled to Mexico to avoid paying child support to members of his four families. In subsequent years, the state boosted its overall success in identifying the parents of children to 69 percent in 1996 and 73 percent last year. Most of that money came from income-withholding on paychecks. But Kadwell, formerly with the Children's Defense Fund, said strict enforcement may not be the only answer.