While 69% children in the United States live in homes with two parents, an estimated 27% of children are maintained in one-parent homes. Most children in the latter group are in homes maintained by the mother only. In 2017, 23% of children lived in mother-only households, a statistic that has roughly doubled since 1970 (when it was 11%). Long-standing research indicates that children raised in one-parent homes are more likely than children raised in homes with both biological parents to do poorly in school, have emotional and behavioral problems, become teenage parents, and have poverty-level incomes as adults. Nonetheless, it is widely acknowledged that although children with absent fathers are at greater risk of having the aforementioned problems, most do not experience them. In an effort to improve the long-term outlook for children in one-parent homes—particularly those with low-income noncustodial parents—federal, state, and local governments (along with public and private organizations) have supported programs and activities that promote the financial and personal responsibility of noncustodial parents to their children and reduce the incidence of parental absence in the lives of children. These "fatherhood initiatives" include campaigns that seek to encourage noncustodial parents to connect with their children; counseling and training on "soft skills," including relationship skills, to help noncustodial parents connect with them; and employment and training services so that they can help financially support them. (Although most people refer to programs that seek to help parents initiate or maintain contact with their children and become emotionally involved in their lives as "fatherhood" programs, the programs generally are gender-neutral with regard to who may participate. Their underlying goal is participation of the noncustodial parent in the lives of his or her children.) This report provides an overview of the federal government's financial support of fatherhood initiatives, including through the Responsible Fatherhood (RF) grant program. It begins by providing a legislative history of this financial support and a summary of allowable activities under the RF grant program. This is followed by an explanation of some of the research and evaluations that have occurred via demonstration programs. The report concludes by briefly examining the role of governmental child support enforcement (CSE) agencies in fatherhood programs, initiatives to promote and support father-child interaction outside the parents' relationship, and recent developments with regard to work-oriented programs for noncustodial parents. Low-income noncustodial parents historically have had little opportunity to participate in public assistance programs. Most of the policy discussion about low-income children that had occurred as part of the "welfare reform" debates between the 1960s to 1990s was focused on single custodial mothers and their children, not on the fathers of those children. This changed to some degree with the enactment of the 1996 welfare reform law ( P.L. 104-193 ), which established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The third finding of that law states: "Promotion of responsible fatherhood and motherhood is integral to successful child rearing and the well-being of children." In addition, three of the four goals of the TANF program included in the law were consistent with the components of most fatherhood programs: ending welfare dependence by employment and marriage, reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. This meant that states could spend TANF funds on fatherhood programs, and the law further allowed any services aimed at reduced nonmarital births or encouraging two-parent families to be free of income eligibility rules. During and soon after welfare reform, fatherhood-related changes were made to certain programs. For example, with regard to the CSE program, visitation and child support had historically been treated as legally separate issues, with only enforcement activities being under the purview of the federal government. However, the 1996 welfare reform law appropriated an additional $10 million per fiscal year in CSE funds for states to establish and operate access and visitation programs. In addition, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 ( P.L. 105-33 ; enacted the year following welfare reform) included a $3 billion "Welfare to Work" grant program, which expired in 2000, to fund employment services for mothers leaving cash assistance who were long-term recipients. This grant was also available to fund employment services for unemployed or underemployed fathers of those mothers' children. The next significant legislative development for fatherhood programs occurred during the 109 th Congress with the enactment of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 ( P.L. 109-171 ; DRA). The DRA included a provision (in Title IV-A of the Social Security Act) that provided funding for competitive Responsible Fatherhood (RF) grants to public and private entities, and also a Healthy Marriage Promotion (HMP) grants program. The law provided up to $50 million per year (FY2006-FY2010) for RF grants, and up to $100 million per year for HMP grants. Subsequently, the RF grants were awarded to 90 organizations to operate fatherhood programs. In addition, 13 other organizations received reentry program grant funding specifically for incarcerated fathers and formerly incarcerated fathers. During the 111 th Congress, the Claims Resolution Act of 2010 ( P.L. 111-291 ) extended funding for the HMP and RF grants through FY2011, but altered the split between the programs to $75 million each. Subsequently, RF program grants were for three-year grants to 55 organizations, and an additional 5 organizations received reentry program grants. Beyond FY2011, when the funding in the Claims Resolution Act was set to expire, the HMP and RF grants received a series of short-term funding extensions, usually through provisions in appropriations acts. (See Appendix A for a list of these extension laws.) A third round of RF grant funding was announced during this period on September 30, 2015, which awarded five-year grants to 39 organizations. (Subsequently, two organizations dropped out of this most recent round of RF grant funding, reducing the total number of participating organizations to 37. ) Five other organizations received reentry program grant funding. Most recently, on May 5, 2017, funding was extended through the end of FY2018 by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017 ( P.L. 115-31 ). (See Appendix B for a chronological legislative history of the RF program.) In addition to federal funds explicitly provided for RF grants, there are several other potential sources of federal funding for fatherhood programs. These include federal TANF funds and TANF state maintenance of effort (MOE) funding, which are potentially the largest sources of federal funding for fatherhood initiatives. (Other sources are CSE funds and Social Services Block Grant funds.) The TANF block grant to states is currently funded through FY2018, at an annual level of $16.5 billion. In addition, the state funding or MOE requirement (at the 75% level) is about $10.4 billion annually. Due to a 71% reduction in the cash welfare caseload since FY1994, together with the fixed block grant funding, funds that otherwise would have been spent for cash assistance are now available for other purposes. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), about half of all states use some TANF funds for responsible fatherhood programs. The realization that one parent, especially a low-income parent, often cannot meet the financial needs of her or his children is not new. In 1975, the CSE program was viewed as a way to make noncustodial parents responsible for the financial support of their children and recover the costs of public assistance to children and custodial parents. With the advent of welfare reform in 1996, Congress agreed that many fathers were in the same financial straits as the mothers of their children who were receiving cash welfare. Thus, the 1996 welfare reform law mandated that each state enact laws authorizing that state to issue an order, or request that a court or administrative process issue an order, that requires noncustodial parents who were unable to pay their child support obligation for a child receiving TANF benefits to participate in TANF work activities. Today, while the CSE, TANF, and RF programs remain separate entities, all three interact in a variety of ways with regard to the role of noncustodial parents in the lives of their children. Since their inception, fatherhood programs have sought to strengthen positive father-child engagement, improve healthy relationships (including couple and coparenting) and marriage, and improve employment and economic mobility opportunities for noncustodial fathers. For the purposes of the RF grant program, federal law specifies the following four activities. (1) Activities to promote marriage or sustain marriage through activities, such as providing information about the benefits of marriage and two-parent involvement for children; enhancing relationship skills; education regarding how to control aggressive behavior; disseminating information on the causes of domestic violence and child abuse; marriage preparation programs and premarital counseling; skills-based marriage education; financial planning seminars; and divorce education and reduction programs, including mediation and counseling. (2) Activities to promote responsible parenting, such as counseling, mentoring, and mediation; disseminating information about good parenting practices; teaching parenting skills; and encouraging child support payments. (3) Activities to foster economic stability, such as helping fathers improve their economic status by providing activities such as job training, employment services, and career-advancing education; and coordination with existing employment services such as welfare-to-work programs, and referrals to local employment training initiatives. (4) Activities to promote responsible fatherhood that are conducted through a national clearinghouse that provides access to curricula, webinars, research products, and other resources to improve the implementation and success of responsible fatherhood programs.