America’s Most Expensive Blind Spot: The $154 Billion Cost of Ignoring Fathers

by Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

In partnership with the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), the Center for Policy Research (CPR) has produced a report that the fatherhood field has needed for a long time: a hard, public ledger. The report — The $154 Billion Man: The Economic Argument for Investing in Fathers (December 2025) — shows what father absence costs the American people year after year through programs we already fund, anchoring our national debate on fatherhood in measurable federal spending instead of morality plays and cultural blame.

Before anyone flinches at the phrase “father absence,” the authors make a move our field has long demanded. They define “father absence” as a household where a biological, step, or adoptive father does not live with the mother and children, while explicitly acknowledging that nonresident fathers can still maintain deep physical, financial, and emotional connections with their children. 

This nuance is not a footnote; it’s the difference between responsible analysis and irresponsible rhetoric. Residence and involvement are not the same thing, and we cannot build policy on the assumption that an address tells the full truth about a father’s presence in his child’s life.

Strengths of the $154 Billion Man Report 

In fiscal year 2018, the CPR-NFI report estimates the federal government spent about $154.2 billion to assist single-mother-headed households across 14 major federal assistance programs. This figure is presented as 41.9% of the combined $368.1 billion budgets of those 14 programs, and nearly 4% of the total FY2018 federal budget. We can debate frames, but we cannot ignore what this number represents: a recurring national expense tied to family structure, economic fragility, and the absence of stable, healthy parenting partnerships.

But the impact of this report is not only its headline total: it’s the story inside the total.

The largest components of the $154.2 billion estimate are not obscure line items buried in spreadsheets. They are the programs that keep families afloat when income and stability are thin: Medicaid at about $43.36 billion, SNAP at about $26.10 billion, the Earned Income Tax Credit at about $18.31 billion, and the Housing Choice Voucher program at about $15.56 billion for single mother-headed households in FY2018. 

Anyone who serves families on the ground recognizes these categories because families talk about them as survival tools. Dads ask how to keep coverage for their children. Moms wonder how to keep food consistent. Co-parents argue about housing, rent, and the cost of simply staying steady. This report translates those lived realities into a national price tag that legislators and funders can no longer treat as abstract.

A second strength is that the $154 Billion Man report refuses to treat this as a one-year snapshot. It updates an earlier $100 billion estimate and shows real-dollar growth from 2006 to 2018. Using a comparable approach, the cost of services to single mother-headed households in those 14 programs rose from about $99.8 billion in 2006 to about $154.2 billion in 2018, a real increase of roughly 54.5%. That trendline shows a trajectory: It allows us to demonstrate, with evidence, that the cost of absorbing family instability is growing, not shrinking.

A third strength is methodological discipline. The authors lean on a consistent dataset, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), to estimate what portion of each program’s spending goes to single-mother-headed households by identifying participation rates by family structure. In a field where conversations can get emotional fast, a consistent method matters. It reduces the temptation to cherry-pick. It strengthens the credibility of the argument. It gives policymakers and researchers a shared point of reference.

Now we have to ask the question that matters most.

What Does the $154 Billion Man Report Mean for Responsible Fatherhood?

In addition to validating what many of us have witnessed for years, the report from CPR and NFI gives us a different kind of authority. 

For too long, fatherhood work has been forced to justify itself in the language of sentiment alone. We have been pressured to plead for attention, to prove that fathers are not optional, to defend dads against stereotypes that treat men as either villains who need punishment or accessories who deserve praise only when convenient. This report equips us to speak a third language, one that budget directors and appropriators understand immediately. It does not merely say, “Fathers are good.” It says, “The way we are currently absorbing father absence is expensive, and much of that expense shows up in predictable places.”

This is a crucial pivot. It creates room for a different policy conversation, one centered on prevention and capacity, not just enforcement and blame.

The report also recognizes what many outside the field miss: Government assistance programs are not the enemy; they are a stabilizer. The report notes a growing body of evidence that income transfers and supports, like food, housing, and medical care, can mitigate the harmful effects of child poverty and improve long-term outcomes. So the argument is not, “Cut benefits.” The argument is, “Stop treating benefits as the only plan.” 

The most strategic takeaway for our field is that responsible fatherhood is a poverty strategy. It is also a child well-being strategy and a public finance strategy.

This framing is especially important because the $154 Billion Man report flags anticipated policy shifts that could reduce or restrict access to multiple programs, and it suggests those changes increase the urgency of investing in fathers so that families are less dependent on public supports to begin with. Whether one agrees with every policy interpretation in that section or not, the underlying logic is clear: When the safety net tightens, the need for stable family economics intensifies. Father involvement and father capacity become even more pivotal.

The report’s recommendations are where the fatherhood field can sharpen its message.

Rather than offering a single silver bullet, the report lays out several directions: 

• Reducing the costs and stress of raising children, through policies like paid leave and affordable childcare
• Strengthening the economic position of fathers through wage supports and work pathways
• Addressing labor market inequities that disproportionately harm fathers of color
• Expanding relationship and fatherhood education programs
• Improving data collection on household composition and race/ethnicity in assistance programs so services can be improved.

Notice what is happening here. The report is not asking fatherhood organizations to become everything. It’s describing an ecosystem where fatherhood work belongs at the center. It’s saying that if we want fewer families trapped in the churn of poverty, we cannot keep ignoring conditions that make father engagement harder: low wages, unstable work, legal barriers, racial inequity, and systems that treat men as wallets instead of parents.

That is precisely where Fathers Incorporated (FI) can use this report as both a mirror and a megaphone.

Our Fatherhood Program Provides Critical Fatherhood Infrastructure 

FI has built a model that already operates within the very categories the report identifies: fatherhood education, relationship skill-building, co-parenting support, workforce connection, family law navigation, and creation of a culture where fathers are seen and expected. Our impact reporting reliably shows a sustained ability to enroll, engage, and graduate large numbers of fathers while responding to the real-life barriers fathers bring into the room. When the $154 Billion Man report calls for stabilizing and expanding fatherhood programs, it is describing the kind of infrastructure FI has already proven it can deliver.

The report also validates a hard truth the field has had to learn the painful way. Fathers do not simply need motivation. They need navigation.

Our legitimation work in Georgia is a textbook example. Men can be required to provide financial support for their children while lacking clear, accessible pathways to legal recognition and parenting rights. Our literature has underscored that physical separation is not synonymous with lack of involvement, and that policy structures can create barriers that confuse and discourage fathers. The $154 Billion Man report, while focused on federal spending patterns, also reinforces the downstream consequences of these structural barriers. When fathers are blocked, unstable, or economically weakened, families lean more heavily on public systems, and the bill grows.

Our fatherhood research and narrative work around Black fathers deepens a point the report makes about labor market inequities and the need to remedy persistent disadvantages. The lived experiences of fathers, especially Black fathers navigating co-parenting challenges, stigma, and a lack of father-friendly services, are not side stories. They are the conditions under which policy either succeeds or fails. The report gives the macro view. FI supplies the micro truth. Together, they form a full argument: The numbers tell us what it costs, and the stories tell us why.

How Fatherhood Programs Can Utilize the $154 Billion Man Report

So how can practitioners use this report tomorrow morning, not just admire it?

Start by treating it like a translation tool. When we are in funding meetings, we don’t have to begin with program descriptions. We can now begin, instead, with the problem statement that is already measured: “In 2018, the federal government spent about $154.2 billion across 14 programs to support single mother-headed households, with Medicaid, SNAP, EITC, and housing assistance as the largest components.” Then we pivot: “Our work strengthens fathers as parents, co-parents, and providers, which is a prevention strategy that reduces the conditions that drive those costs.”

When we are talking to the public, we don’t lead with blame. We lead with clarity. The report points out that many children in single-parent households grow up to be well-adjusted adults, and that separations can sometimes reduce conflict and increase safety. That line is a guardrail. It avoids shaming mothers or romanticizing unhealthy relationships. The argument is not, “Stay together no matter what.” The argument is, “Children deserve stable love, stable money, stable parenting, and stable systems that do not sabotage either parent’s ability to show up safely.”

When designing programs, we can align service offerings with what families are actually facing. Medicaid and SNAP dominate the spending estimate. This means health access, mental health stability, and economic stability are central, not “extra.” That aligns with FI’s longstanding insistence that fatherhood programming must be holistic, not just motivational. It also supports our work that addresses mental health and resiliency, because a father who is drowning emotionally will struggle to climb economically, and both will show up as strains on the family.

When shaping policy agendas, we can use the report’s timeline and methodology to advocate for father-inclusive policy design. The report emphasizes that the $154.2 billion federal investment is not the full cost of father absence; it’s only a slice, which does not include many indirect costs and cannot analyze many programs due to missing household structure data. That becomes a policy ask in itself: Require better data collection on fathers across systems and integrate father-engagement measures into program accountability. If we do not count fathers, we will not build for fathers.

Fatherhood Program Strategy Informed by the $154 Billion Man Report

FI intends to use the report in five strategic ways that fit our footprint and our voice.

• First, FI will embed the report into national storytelling through the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) and our media work. The responsible fatherhood field has always needed better messages that travel. This report provides a sticky phrase, a serious statistic, and a practical guide on how leaders and organizations can use the findings to strengthen families. This is ready-made content for webinars, briefs, toolkits, and op-eds.
• Second, FI sees the report as a bridge between responsible fatherhood and adjacent fields that already control large budgets: maternal health, child welfare, workforce development, and housing. Many of those sectors still treat father engagement as optional. The $154 Billion Man report puts a dollar figure on the cost of that omission. It gives us a shared point of entry with professionals who may not be persuaded by the moral argument but will lean in when they see fiscal consequences.
• Third, FI will use the report to support the replication of our program model. FI has a proven service delivery model for fathers that can scale with fidelity, combining curriculum, case management, life coaching, and a brotherhood culture. The report’s recommendations explicitly call for expanding and stabilizing fatherhood programs and relationship education and for conducting research to enhance effectiveness. FI is positioned to argue not only for funding, but for disciplined expansion.
• Fourth, the report backs FI’s advocacy around family law reforms that increase father involvement while protecting family safety. If a system creates barriers to legal father involvement or treats parenting time as an afterthought, it increases instability and conflict. Our work in legitimation and father-inclusive practice has already named those barriers. This report gives us a way to show the public consequences of family instability in federal spending terms, while we continue to insist that safety is paramount and violence is never acceptable.
• Fifth, the report helps FI reframe how we talk about “investment.” Too often, fatherhood funding is treated as charity. The report makes it clear that the nation is already paying. We are paying after the fact, through Medicaid, SNAP, housing supports, and more. The responsible fatherhood field exists to shift spending upstream to skills, support, stability, and healthy co-parenting — not as a lecture to families but as a practical intervention for the conditions they’re are navigating.

What the $154 Billion Man Report Reveals About Child Support 

Two words rush into the conversation any time we talk about household instability and public cost: child support and marriage. While both belong in the conversation, neither can be allowed to become the conversation.

Child support matters. It’s one of the most visible ways our systems attempt to ensure that children receive financial help from both parents. No serious voice in the fatherhood field should treat financial support as optional, because feeding a child, housing a child, clothing a child, and caring for a child is not optional. Money is not love, but money is part of care. When we say that plainly, we are not reducing fatherhood to a payment. We are naming the real-world requirements of raising a child.

Yet child support, by itself, cannot carry the weight we often place on it.

If our public imagination treats child support as the sole answer, we end up building policies that chase dollars but overlook the deeper mechanisms that stabilize families: consistent parenting time, predictable routines for children, cooperative co-parenting, conflict reduction, employment stability, trauma-informed support, and the relational skill building that keeps two households from becoming two warring nations. 

A child can receive support and still suffer the consequences of chronic conflict, absence of parenting, or instability of schedules. A father can pay support and still feel locked out of meaningful involvement, which can increase resentment, disengagement, underground work, and the kind of economic fragility that makes compliance harder over time.

This is why responsible fatherhood leaders have long argued for a broader framework: Child support must be understood as a contribution to stability, not a substitute for it.

When our systems treat fathers primarily as payers, we train fathers to believe that their highest value is financial, and we train children to believe that their father’s role is transactional. Neither outcome strengthens families. Legislators and funders who care about children must understand that children need more than a check. They need time, attention, guidance, emotional safety, presence, and consistency. Financial support helps sustain the environment where those things can flourish, but it cannot create them on its own.

Bringing child support into this conversation also helps us interpret the $154 billion figure more honestly. Some will be tempted to respond with a simplistic counter argument: Make fathers pay more, and the cost goes away. But this response ignores the reality that many fathers in the caseload are low-income, underemployed, sporadically employed, or navigating barriers that make stable work difficult. It also ignores that dollars do not automatically translate into stability if co-parenting is fractured, parenting time is unclear, or families lack the skills to navigate transitions.

A smarter response is to build an approach that integrates child support into a broader father-inclusive strategy: employment and wage growth, realistic order-setting practices, early engagement at the point of paternity establishment, father-friendly service navigation, parenting time support when safe, co-parenting education, and conflict reduction. 

This integrated framing is not theoretical for FI: it’s our daily reality. When we sit with fathers, we hear how child support intersects with employment, transportation, legal access, parenting time, and the emotional wear of feeling unseen. We also see how quickly things can improve when systems are designed to support fathers as parents, not simply chase them as payers. 

The report validates the economic urgency of this work, and our experience validates the human urgency of getting it right.

Is Marriage the Pathway for Reducing the $154 Billion Cost of Family Stability?

Marriage deserves respect in this conversation because the evidence is clear that, on average, children in stable married households often experience positive outcomes. This reality should not be denied, mocked, or minimized. At the same time, we do real harm when we speak as if marriage is the destination our programs should force families toward or as if marriage is the only legitimate pathway to a flourishing child.

Children thrive in stable environments. Marriage can be one expression of stability, but it is not the only expression.

Many children flourish in households led by single parents, blended families, cohabiting parents, grandparents, and kinship networks. Many parents separate for reasons tied to safety, mental health, addiction, chronic conflict, or patterns of harm that no child should be required to witness. Pretending that marriage alone is the solution pressures families into staying in situations that undermine stability rather than strengthen it.

The more responsible path for policymakers and funders is to focus on what marriage, at its best, represents: capacity.

Capacity is the heart of this issue. Capacity is the skills and the supports that make a relationship stable and the communication tools that prevent conflict from escalating into warfare. It’s the emotional maturity that keeps pain from turning into punishment, the economic footing that reduces the strain that makes small disagreements explode, the co-parenting discipline that keeps children from being recruited into adult battles, and the community supports that normalize help-seeking instead of shame. These are the conditions that help marriages endure. They’re also the conditions that help co-parenting partnerships endure when marriage is not present.

This is why our field must be careful about the language we use when citing positive outcomes associated with marriage. The lesson is not that marriage is magic. The lesson is that stability is powerful and can be built.

If legislators and funders want an answer that respects families, respects data, and respects the complexity of human relationships, our message should be clear: Our national strategy must invest in stability-building, not symbolism.

This is where the fatherhood field brings uncommon value. We work with the exact levers that create stability across household types: father engagement, parenting consistency, co-parenting cooperation, conflict resolution, employment support, legal navigation, emotional regulation, and peer accountability. We help fathers become the kind of men who can hold steady when life is unstable. We help co-parents develop the kind of discipline that keeps children protected from adult chaos. We help families build environments where responsibility is practiced, not just preached.

The $154 Billion Man Report and the Economics of Fatherhood

This report lands because it restores dignity to the fatherhood conversation and refuses to reduce fathers to heroes or hazards. It frames fathers as economic actors, relational anchors, and public health factors. It suggests that improving father involvement is not just about a man “doing right.” It’s about building conditions where doing right is possible, repeatable, and supported.

If America is willing to spend $154.2 billion cleaning up the consequences of instability, America should be willing to spend far less building stability. This frees the fatherhood conversation from ideology and moves it toward stewardship.

If we tell the truth about what father absence costs, we also have to tell the truth about what father presence can create: a child with fewer stressors, a mother with more partnership, a father with more purpose, and a community with fewer emergencies. The responsible fatherhood field has never claimed fathers are the only answer. We have claimed, consistently, that fathers are part of the answer society keeps trying to reach without them.

If legislators and funders are serious about reducing long-term public cost while improving children’s outcomes, the path forward is not to cling to any single lever but to build an aligned strategy that treats mothers and fathers as essential, child well-being as the standard, and stability as the outcome. 

It means investing in fatherhood and relationship education that strengthens communication and co-parenting. It means ensuring families can access health care and mental health care without crisis being the entry point. It means creating work pathways that allow fathers to provide, not just promise. It means integrating child support into a framework that encourages employment, increases fairness, strengthens parenting, and supports participation. It means respecting marriage as one pathway to stability, without reducing it to a slogan that ignores the skills and supports required for stability to last. It means designing systems that stop pretending fathers are optional and start building services that reflect reality.

The $154 billion number keeps us honest: Although we’re already investing in family stability, we’re investing later than makes sense. We can keep paying for fallout, or we can invest with intention in the skills, capacity, and stability that help families thrive across every household structure.

Kenneth Braswell is a nationally recognized leader in the responsible fatherhood movement and author of several acclaimed books, including When the Tear Won’t Fall, Strength of the Father, Kwesi and the Ogre, and Too Seasoned to Care. He is the CEO of Fathers Incorporated and host of the I Am Dad Podcast.