ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an analysis of discourses surrounding the enactment of the Child Support Act in the early 1990s. It shows how powerful discourses from pertinent academic disciplines are used to posit a certain ‘truth’ about the importance of fathers for the security of ‘the family’ and for the well-being of children. The chapter demonstrates the class-based nature of the campaign against the Act and how middle-class non-residential fathers succeeded in establishing themselves as ‘victims’ of an over-zealous and interfering state. It is concerned with the various social and legal constructions of the non-residential father and associated representations thereof. The chapter considers how fathers with an interest in showing themselves as the ‘good fathers’ of law have rigorously challenged the pernicious representations. By the 1970s, the adequacy of ‘attachment’ and ‘maternal deprivation’ theories were under challenge from new research, which demonstrated that infants could form attachments with a variety of people and not just the mother.
