Revisiting “The Politics of Fatherhood”: Administrative Agencies, Family Life, and Public Policy

research and planning anJ associate professor of politicaBscience at St. Olaf College She has assisted the Minnesota Department of Human Services with child support guidelines policy analysis anJ development for five years. She can be contacted via email to beld@stolaf.eJu. I read with initial interest, and then growing dismay, Professor Stephen Baskerville's polemic against the "judicial-bureaucratic machinery" characterizing family law and policy in the United States (PS, December 2002, 695-99). In "The Politics of Fatherhood," Professor Baskerville argues that the "fatherhood crisis. . . proceed[s] at least in part from public policy" and "should be seen less as sociological or psychological and more as political" (695). Political scientists, he charges, have neglected systematic analysis of "the governmental institutions that regulate the relationships between parents and their children" (696) family courts, administrative agencies, and private consulting firms. Unfortunately, Professor Baskerville's contribution does not remedy this deficiency in the scholarly literature. His article provides little direct evidence in support of his claims; instead, it relies upon assumptions, assertions, innuendo, and the occasional lurid anecdote. A more careful analysis of the policy-making process and the resulting policies affecting separated families yields a much more complicated and intriguing picture than the one Professor Baskerville presents. Where Professor Baskerville sees public policy and policymakers as driving parental decision making, the evidence suggests a complex relationship of mutual influence. In this essay, I will argue that the complicated nature of family life has at least as much impact on policy development and administration as family policies and administrative agencies have on family life. I speak from experience. For the past five years I have been walking in two worlds, teaching politics, public policy, and research methods in a four-year liberal arts institution while serving as a consultant to the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Minnesota Department of Human Services (MDHS). My principal responsibility has been to provide leadership and research support for the review and revision of Minnesota's child support guidelines. While Minnesota is among the majority of states whose child support guidelines are established by the state legislature (Venohr and Williams 1999), the Minnesota Department of Human Services is charged with the responsibility of conducting the federally-mandated quadrennial review of those guidelines (45 CFR 302.56 (e); Minn. Stat. 518.551, Subd. 5c). Furthermore, like any administrative agency, MDHS has historically been a principal source of policy innovation and advice to the legislature in the program areas for which it is responsible (Denhardt and Grubbs 2002). The agency had made legislative recommendations for significant alterations to the child support guidelines in conjunction with its two previous quadrennial reviews (Minnesota Department of Human Services 1990; 1994). Some of these recommendations were incorporated into state statute in 1993, but the effort to reconstruct the guidelines entirely on the basis of the 1994 review was unsuccessful. The third review, which commenced in 1998, provided the occasion for a renewed agency effort to assist the legislature in overhauling the state's child support guidelines. The Minnesota Child Support Act, a version of the child support guidelines model that emerged from this project, is presently under consideration at the Minnesota state legislature.l I spent my 1998-1999 sabbatical year working full-time on the guidelines project in the MDHS child support division, and have continued to provide research support and policy advice to the agency ever since. I served as the principal researcher and policy analyst on the agency project team that conducted the review and developed a new guidelines model for legislative consideration. The project included an extensive review of the economic literature on the cost of raising children and an analysis of a representative sample of statewide child support orders, both of which are required by the federal regulation mandating the four-year cycle of guidelines reviews (45 CFR 302.56 (h)). It also required analysis of the child support guidelines and quadrennial reviews of other states; a review of relevant Minnesota case law; an examination of other program areas whose provisions were intertwined with child support policy (cash grant programs, child care subsidy programs, and medical assistance, to name a few); and a review of the research literature from a wide array of sources law reviews, social science journals, research institutes, and private firms such as Policy Studies Inc. As a result of these project activities, I am familiar with most of the policy literature cited by Professor Baskerville, and a great deal more that he did not cite. But the project engaged me with more than policy research and program provisions. It engaged me with the clients of the child support system and the professionals who serve them. At the request of the agency, I convened and facilitated an advisory task force which included representatives of the very "judicial-bureaucratic machinery" Professor Baskerville discusses-county child support workers, district court judges, child support magistrates, legal assistance attorneys, county attorneys, private attorneys, mediators, state legislators, and advocacy groups. Parents, child support professionals, and family law practitioners from around the state added their perspectives to those of the task force members in public hearings and regional meetings of professional associations. My field work has also included first-hand experience in the legislative process, including the drafting of statutory language, the provision of testimony in committee hearings, the preparation of policy memos and informational handouts to accompany legislative proposals, and the completion of several major reports for both legislative and public use. The Minnesota child