“Family”, family obligations and money: Pacific mothers’ discussions of child support.

Abstract

In the context of rising rates of parental separation and divorce as well extramarital births, child support continues to be a personal and policy challenge with the capacity to improve the economic and social well-being of resident parents, who are typically mothers. To date, much of the analysis of and writings about child support have drawn on normative Western understandings of family structures, and the organisation and enactment of gender relations and family obligations within that structure. There has been an absence of any examination into the ways in which ethnicity, and specifically one’s cultural position, contributes to and shapes experiences of family life. In this thesis, I explore Pacific mothers’ notions of and experiences with child support. Particular attention is focused on the ways that family, care and money are collectively negotiated and individually organised post-separation within Pacific families in New Zealand. Central to these discussions are investigations of the ways in which mothers articulate familial duties and obligations, and how such considerations shape and constrain their actions, behaviours and identity-making processes. I present data from interviews with nine Pacific mothers to argue that the ways in which mothers’ frame family, and parental, obligations constrain their decision-making in regards to child support in terms of its pursuit and its use upon receipt. The mothers’ notions of child support were to a large extent conditioned and constrained by both their ethnic and gendered social position within the family. This exploration of Pacific mothers’ experiences with child support contributes to the existing research on post-separation families by extending the usual scope of study that has largely and almost exclusively explored dominant understandings of the family and obligations, to acknowledge and speak to the experiences of Pacific mothers and families. This research study provides a timely discussion in light of the recent legislative reforms to New Zealand’s child support policies, namely the Child Support Amendment Act 2013, which revised the Child Support Act 1991.