Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2023
Much of contemporary discourse surrounding family support obligations has long centered on parents’ financial contributions to their minor children. “Deadbeat Dads” who failed to meet parental support obligations, and whose children required public assistance, were central targets in the 1996 welfare reforms, the culmination of years of policies directed at non-supporting parents. Largely absent in these debates was the responsibility of other family members – adult children, grandparents, siblings, and grandchildren – to support family members in need. Known as responsible relative or filial responsibility laws, such requirements have a long history in American social policy dating to colonial America. In 2016, twenty-nine states still had laws requiring adult children to support needy parents, although enforcement of such obligations had waned a generation earlier.1
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