By L.A. Loss & Abortion Doula
“I want a baby” can sound like a promise of a future together. For a woman considering a pregnancy, though, there is another conversation worth having: What will that person contribute when the baby is here?
Research examining American fertility goals found that men were more likely than women to intend to have a child or another child. Alongside the documented $113.4 billion in unpaid child support, that finding raises an important question:
How do we move from wanting children to consistently providing for them—and what happens when promised support never arrives?
What the Study Found
Published in January 2026 in Population Research and Policy Review, Trends and Levels in Men’s and Women’s Fertility Goals in the United States, by Luca Badolato and Sarah R. Hayford, analyzed National Survey of Family Growth data from 2011–2019.
The researchers found that men were more likely than women to intend to have a child or another child. Men also intended longer delays before childbearing. Intentions to have children declined for both groups, with a faster decline among women. Intentions to remain childless and to postpone childbearing increased among both men and women.
These findings describe population patterns. They do not establish that a particular man will abandon his responsibilities, or that men universally want children more intensely than women do. The study did not examine whether unpaid child support causes women to avoid pregnancy or choose abortion.
Still, it invites a practical discussion: wanting a child and being prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood are different commitments.
Who Receives Child Support?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s report on 2022 child support, published in 2025, 85.7% of custodial parents who received any child support payments were mothers. The remaining 14.3% were fathers.
This shows that mothers made up the overwhelming majority of custodial parents receiving payments. It is a statistic about recipients, rather than a direct count of male and female payers. It also does not establish what percentage of accumulated unpaid support was owed by men.
For this discussion, the distinction matters: mothers represent the large majority of parents receiving child support, but the entire national arrears balance cannot accurately be described as debt owed exclusively by fathers.
Where $113.4 Billion in Unpaid Child Support Fits
A December 2024 federal publication identifies approximately $113.4 billion in child support arrears in the fiscal year 2022 preliminary federal data.
This is accumulated unpaid support from multiple years, rather than the amount missed in one year. It is a historical figure, not a verified current 2026 total.
The figure covers arrears recorded by the child support program. It does not establish that every unpaid dollar was deliberately withheld. Federal officials also identify low reported incomes and unstable employment as substantial barriers to payment.
Those distinctions matter. So does the reality facing a household waiting for support: money owed cannot cover today’s groceries, child care, or rent until it arrives.
What Was Promised Before the Child Was Born?
Do you think every father represented in that $113.4 billion in unpaid child support said upfront, “I won’t consistently provide for this child—even if that means the child goes hungry without family help or public assistance”?
Or is it possible that some once promised, “I’ll be there. I’ll help. You won’t have to do this alone”?
These are hypothetical examples. The debt figures do not document those conversations, establish anyone’s intentions, or tell us how frequently such promises were made. But the question matters:
How many women may have made life-changing decisions believing promises of support that never became consistent action?
A woman may hear those assurances and picture shared responsibility: dependable financial help, participation in daily care, and someone who remains involved even if the relationship changes.
If that support does not materialize, she must make decisions based on what is actually available. Rent, groceries, and child care cannot be paid with reassurance someone offered during pregnancy.
Circumstances can change, and some parents face genuine hardship. That does not erase a child’s needs or the difficulty facing the parent trying to meet them.
What Would Those Unpaid Obligations Look Like Without a Safety Net?
In the United States, a woman whose partner leaves or stops contributing may have access to food assistance, school meals, health coverage, food banks, or support from relatives and community organizations.
These resources can help prevent a financial crisis from becoming a survival emergency. They may provide something essential even when they do not provide comfort, stability, or enough money to meet every need.
Access is uneven. Assistance may be difficult to obtain, insufficient, or unavailable to a particular family. Its existence does not guarantee that every child is protected from hunger or homelessness.
But when that help reaches a household, it can make an enormous difference.
A child being fed does not mean the missing parent’s contribution was unnecessary. It may mean the mother, relatives, taxpayers, or charitable organizations absorbed part of the burden.
The arrears figure cannot tell us what would have happened without that help. Nevertheless, it invites us to consider how much hardship other people and institutions may have prevented by stepping in.
Without those resources, the consequences of missing support could be far more severe.
When Nobody Can Pick Up the Slack
Consider the same situation in a community where poverty is severe, work is scarce, and food assistance, affordable health care, and emergency housing are limited or inaccessible.
If a father abandons his responsibilities, the mother may have no dependable replacement income. Relatives may already be struggling to feed their own households. Charities may be overwhelmed or unable to reach her.
A mother can work, sacrifice, and do everything within her power while still lacking enough resources to meet her child’s basic needs.
Under those conditions, losing a parent’s contribution can help push an already vulnerable household toward hunger, unsafe housing, untreated illness, and potentially death.
A United Nations report released in 2026 estimated that more than 100,000 children aged one month to under five died directly from severe acute malnutrition in 2024.
Those deaths were not attributed specifically to paternal abandonment or unpaid child support. But a child left without adequate food and unable to access treatment could face that same fatal outcome.
The danger also extends beyond deaths directly caused by severe acute malnutrition. Undernutrition makes illnesses more dangerous. The World Health Organization reports that nearly half of deaths among children under five are linked to undernutrition, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries.
That broader figure does not mean nearly half of young children’s deaths are directly caused by starvation. Inadequate nutrition often contributes to a child dying from another illness.
Where death registration is incomplete, the exact toll is harder to establish. Estimates carry uncertainty; we cannot assign an additional number of deaths without evidence.
The danger depends on whether a family can obtain food, shelter, treatment, and emergency help. In communities where survival depends heavily on immediate household resources, losing financial support can become life-threatening.
Public Assistance Can Cushion the Consequences of Abandonment
When a grandmother buys groceries, a food program supplies meals, or a community organization provides necessities, that intervention can reduce the immediate harm of missing support. UNICEF describes cash assistance as a way to help families obtain food, health care, and other essentials.
Those interventions should not make the original responsibility disappear from the conversation.
If a child survives because other people supplied the food, housing, or care a parent failed to help provide, the safety net has protected the child. It has not made the parent’s absence harmless.
Without that protection, a child can be left exposed to whatever the remaining household can afford: enough food or too little, secure housing or displacement, timely treatment or an untreated illness.
In the most severe circumstances, the consequences can be fatal.
That does not mean every unpaid obligation is deliberate or that every abandoned child will face starvation. It means the consequences depend partly on whether someone else has the resources to intervene.
A Desire for Fatherhood Should Include a Plan for Responsibility
The connection between the fertility study and child support debt is a question about responsibility. It is not evidence that the men surveyed are the same men who owe unpaid support.
If someone wants a woman to have his child, it is reasonable for her to ask what that commitment will look like.
Who will cover expenses during time away from work? Who will handle child care when the child is sick? How will overnight care and household tasks be divided? What happens if the relationship ends or someone loses a job?
“We will figure it out” may express hope. A woman is entitled to ask for specific plans.
She also deserves time to consider demonstrated behavior alongside promises. Does this person follow through on existing responsibilities? Does he contribute consistently now? Can he discuss caregiving and expenses without dismissing her concerns?
She cannot guarantee another person’s future behavior. Asking these questions gives her information; it does not make her responsible if someone later fails to fulfill a commitment.
“There Are Programs That Can Help” Is an Incomplete Reassurance
For a woman weighing whether to continue a pregnancy, telling her that she can pursue child support or apply for assistance leaves essential questions unanswered.
How much money would actually arrive? When would it arrive? What would she do during a gap in payments? Would she qualify for assistance, and would it meet her child’s needs?
The national arrears figure cannot predict her individual outcome. It does give reason to avoid treating future payments as a certainty.
Family help and public assistance may be part of her planning. But saying that someone else can pick up the financial burden does not answer whether the person promising to support his child will follow through.
Financial uncertainty deserves space in a pregnancy conversation alongside her feelings about motherhood, her relationships, her existing responsibilities, and the future she wants.
A Woman’s Decision Deserves More Than Someone Else’s Promise
A partner’s desire for a baby can be meaningful. It does not settle whether a woman wants to continue a pregnancy or feels ready for parenthood.
She deserves space to assess what support exists now, what commitments are credible, and what she would need if circumstances changed. She deserves room to want motherhood without having her concerns dismissed—or to decide that motherhood is not what she wants.
The fertility study examines what people intend. The child support figure documents obligations that remained unpaid. The evidence on childhood malnutrition shows how dangerous inadequate resources can become.
Together, they prompt a necessary question:
What are you prepared to do, consistently, to help the child you want survive and thrive?
A desire for children should come with responsibility for their care. It should not rest on an assumption that the mother, her family, or public services will somehow find a way.
Sources
- Badolato, L., & Hayford, S. R. (2026). Trends and Levels in Men’s and Women’s Fertility Goals in the United States. Population Research and Policy Review, 45, Article 6. Survey data: 2011–2019.
- U.S. Census Bureau (2025). Custodial Parents and Their Child Support: 2022. Reports that mothers represented 85.7% of custodial parents receiving any child support payments in 2022.
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child Support Services. Employment and Training Services for Noncustodial Parents in the Child Support Program. Federal Register, December 13, 2024, p. 100792, footnote 28. Identifies the $113.4 billion figure from the FY 2022 Preliminary Data Tables, Table P–98.
- United Nations (2026). Nearly 5 million children are still dying annually before their fifth birthday: Here’s why. Reports estimated deaths directly caused by severe acute malnutrition in 2024.
- World Health Organization. Malnutrition. Explains the relationship between undernutrition, illness, and childhood mortality.
- UNICEF USA. Humanitarian Cash Transfers for Children. Describes assistance helping families obtain food, health care, and other necessities.
The connections and hypothetical questions in this article are editorial commentary. These sources do not establish how often partners promised support, whether unpaid child support caused particular deaths, or whether the men surveyed in the fertility study subsequently failed to support children.
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