The stigmatization of single mothers who receive child support proliferates in news media, policy, and popular culture. Drawing on critical stigma literature, we examined data from interviews conducted with child support recipients in Australia and the United Kingdom. Our analysis examined how women receiving child support experienced stigma, how stigma was applied to other women in similar situations, and the political implications of these framings. Our interview data suggested child support stigma can be grouped into three categories, where women were seen to contravene maternal norms, patriarchal norms, and/or familial norms. These norms sanctioned mothers’ use of, amount of, and reliance on child support, viewing it fundamentally as men’s money that women take, rather than the contribution of a nonresident parent to their children’s upbringing. The source of stigma may have been ex-partners, child support bureaucratic systems, or recipients themselves, but the social and political functions of child support stigma remained the same: it discouraged solidarity between recipients and encouraged policy reform that further disadvantaged them.

在新闻媒体，政策和流行文化中，单身母亲受到子女抚养的污名化程度很高。借助批判性的污名文献，我们检查了与澳大利亚和英国的儿童抚养费接受者进行的访谈中的数据。我们的分析研究了接受子女抚养费的妇女如何遭受耻辱，在类似情况下如何将耻辱应用于其他妇女以及这些框架的政治含义。我们的访谈数据表明，对儿童抚养费的污名可分为三类，在这些类别中，妇女被视为违反母体规范，父权规范和/或家庭规范。这些规范批准了母亲对子女抚养费的使用，数量和依赖，从根本上将其视为妇女所赚取的男人的钱，而不是非居民父母对子女抚养的贡献。污名的来源可能是前合作伙伴，子女抚养费官僚体系或受助人本人，但子女抚养费受污名的社会和政治功能保持不变：它阻碍了受助人之间的团结，并鼓励了进一步使他们处于不利地位的政策改革。