Child Support Statistics by Gender: Custody, Orders, and Payments

Child support statistics by gender show a lopsided picture on custody and a more complicated one on payment. About 78.2 percent of the roughly 13.9 million custodial parents in the United States are mothers, and 21.8 percent are fathers.¹ Custodial mothers are owed far more money in total, and receive far more, but non-custodial mothers are actually more likely than non-custodial fathers to pay nothing at all.

Who Has Custody

The Census Bureau counts about 10.9 million custodial mothers and 3 million custodial fathers as of 2022. A custodial parent, in this data, is anyone living with a child under 21 whose other parent lives elsewhere, whether custody was set by a court or worked out informally.¹

The father share has grown, but not quickly. In 1993, custodial fathers numbered about 2.2 million, roughly 16 percent of custodial parents. By 2022 that share reached 21.8 percent.¹ Nearly three decades of movement, and custodial households are still overwhelmingly headed by mothers.

How Much Is Owed and How Much Is Received

In 2022, custodial mothers were owed a collective $25.2 billion in child support and received $16.2 billion. Custodial fathers were owed $4.8 billion and received $3.0 billion.¹ Across all custodial parents, about $29.9 billion was supposed to change hands, and roughly $11 billion of it never did.

Per-parent amounts run close between the two groups. Custodial mothers who were owed support collected a mean of $4,157 per year and a median of $2,902. Custodial fathers received a mean of $3,851 and a median of $2,290.¹ The distance between mean and median in both groups shows that a small number of high payments pull the averages up while most families see less.

Who Actually Pays

Among all custodial parents owed support in 2022, about 49.5 percent received the full amount owed, roughly 26 percent received partial payments, and about 24.5 percent received nothing.¹

Split by the custodial parent’s gender, the pattern turns unexpected. Custodial fathers were more likely to receive full payment (52.5 percent) than custodial mothers (49.0 percent). But custodial fathers were also far more likely to receive nothing: 35.9 percent reported zero payments, compared with 22.2 percent of custodial mothers.¹

Read that another way. Non-custodial mothers tend toward the extremes: they either pay in full or they pay nothing. Non-custodial fathers are more likely to land in the middle, making at least a partial payment even when they fall short of the full amount owed.

Who Even Has an Order

Most of this data only applies to custodial parents with a legal support order, and that group has been shrinking. In 2022, just 37.3 percent of custodial parents had a formal agreement in place, whether court-ordered or set through an administrative process. In 2003, the figure was 55.1 percent.¹

Reasons custodial parents give for not pursuing an order vary. Some report that the other parent provides support through non-cash means, like buying clothes or covering school costs. Others say they didn’t want the courts involved, or believed the other parent couldn’t afford to contribute. State child support agencies, operating under the federal Title IV-D program, can help parents establish orders at little or no cost, but many families either don’t know the option exists or choose not to use it.²

What the Gender Split Actually Tells You

The headline gap in child support is largely a custody gap. Mothers hold custody at nearly four times the rate of fathers, so mothers unsurprisingly account for most of the dollars owed and most of the dollars received. The per-parent averages are much closer than the aggregate totals.

The compliance data cuts against the simpler story. Non-custodial mothers stop paying entirely more often than non-custodial fathers do, even though non-custodial fathers carry the vast majority of total support obligations. Enforcement mechanisms were largely built around the assumption that the non-custodial parent would be the father, and the 35.9 percent zero-payment rate reported by custodial fathers suggests those tools may work less well when the roles are reversed. Meanwhile, the steady drop in formal support agreements means a growing share of custodial parents of either gender have no legal way to enforce payment if the other parent stops contributing.

1
U.S. Census Bureau. Custodial Parents and Their Child Support: 2022
2
Social Security Administration. Social Security Act Title IV – Part D Child Support and Establishment of Paternity