Paternal Incarceration and Support for Children in Fragile Families

High U.S. incarceration rates have motivated recent research on the negative effects of imprisonment on later employment, earnings, and family relationships. Because most men in jail and prison are fathers, a large number of children may be placed at considerable risk by policies of incarceration. This article examines one dimension of the economic risk faced by children of incarcerated fathers: the reduction in the financial support that they receive. We use a population-based sample of urban children to examine the effects of incarceration on this support. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal regressions indicate that formerly incarcerated men are less likely to contribute to their families, and those who do contribute provide significantly less. The negative effects of incarceration on fathers’ financial support are due not only to the low earnings of formerly incarcerated men but also to their increased likelihood to live apart from their children. Men contribute far less through child support (formal or informal) than they do when they share their earnings within their household, suggesting that the destabilizing effects of incarceration on family relationships place children at significant economic disadvantage.     

Positive,Negative, or Null? The Effects of Maternal Incarceration on Children’s Behavioral Problems

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to consider the effects of maternal incarceration on 21 caregiver- and teacher-reported behavioral problems among 9-year-old children. The results suggest three primary conclusions. First, children of incarcerated mothers are a disadvantaged group that exhibit high levels of caregiver- and teacher-reported behavioral problems. Second, after we adjust for selection, the effects of maternal incarceration on children’s behavioral problems are consistently null (for 19 of 21 outcomes) and rarely positive (1 of 21) or negative (1 of 21), suggesting that the poor outcomes of these children are driven by disadvantages preceding maternal incarceration rather than incarceration. These effects, however, vary across race/ethnicity, with maternal incarceration diminishing caregiver-reported behavioral problems among non-Hispanic whites. Finally, in models considering both maternal and paternal incarceration, paternal incarceration is associated with more behavioral problems, which is consistent with previous research and suggests that the null effects of maternal incarceration are not artifacts of our sample or analytic decisions.     

Parenting a child with a disability: An examination of resident and non-resident fathers

Children with disabilities often require, more extensive family involvement and greater paternal support than other children. Yet these children are the children least likely to live with their fathers. This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 from the United States to examine the association between child disability and resident and non-resident biological fathers’ supportiveness, relationship, and monitoring of their children. Regression analyses indicate significant challenges for all fathers of children with disabilities. Children of resident fathers report more positive interactions than children of non-resident fathers. However, earlier co-residence and more frequent contact significantly improve the quality, of father-youth relationships among men who do not live with their children.     

Formerly Incarcerated Parents and Their Children

The negative effects of incarceration on child well-being are often linked to the economic insecurity of formerly incarcerated parents. Researchers caution, however, that the effects of parental incarceration may be small in the presence of multiple-partner fertility and other family complexity. Despite these claims, few studies have directly observed either economic insecurity or the full extent of family complexity. We study parent-child relationships with a unique data set that includes detailed information about economic insecurity and family complexity among parents just released from prison. We find that stable private housing, more than income, is associated with close and regular contact between parents and children. Formerly incarcerated parents see their children less regularly in contexts of multiple-partner fertility and in the absence of supportive family relationships. Significant housing and family effects are estimated even after we control for drug use and crime, which are themselves negatively related to parental contact. The findings point to the constraints of material insecurity and the complexity of family relationships on the contact between formerly incarcerated parents and their children.     

The Impact of Fathers’ Work and Family Conflicts on Children’s Self-Esteem: The Hong Kong Case

Work and family conflicts are always viewed as issues of human resource management or occupational health. Insufficient attention has been focused on the impact on child development and quality of parenting, especially regarding the impact of a father’s work. To examine the impact of work and family conflicts on the quality of father–child interactions in Hong Kong, a cross-sectional survey was conducted. In total, 556 pairs of working fathers and their school-aged children participated in the survey. The findings of the survey indicated that fathers’ work-to-family conflicts negatively affected the quality of father–child interactions, which in turn caused harm to children’s self-esteem. In addition to work-family conflicts, a low income level of the fathers, a larger number of children in the family, and the presence in the family of children approaching adolescence were significant risk factors to the quality of father–child interactions. The mothers’ active parental involvement and the complexity of the fathers’ occupation were significant protective factors of the quality of father–child interactions. To facilitate strong family bonding and good quality parenting, possible measures to ensure a healthy work-family balance among working fathers are discussed.     

Divorced Fathers’ Proximity and Children’s Long-Run Outcomes: Evidence From Norwegian Registry Data

This study examines the link between divorced nonresident fathers’ proximity and children’s long-run outcomes, using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers. We follow (from birth to young adulthood) each of 15,992 children born into married households in Norway in the years 1975–1979 whose parents divorced during his or her childhood. We observe the proximity of the child to his or her father in each year following the divorce and link proximity to educational and economic outcomes for the child in young adulthood, controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics of the parents and the child. Our results show that closer proximity to the father following a divorce has, on average, a modest negative association with offspring’s outcomes in young adulthood. The negative associations are stronger among children of highly educated fathers. Complementary Norwegian survey data show that highly educated fathers report more post-divorce conflict with their ex-wives as well as more contact with their children (measured in terms of the number of nights that the child spends at the father’s house). Consequently, the father’s relocation to a more distant location following the divorce may shelter the child from disruptions in the structure of the child’s life as they split time between households and/or from post-divorce interparental conflict.     

The Unequal Consequences of Mass Incarceration for Children

A growing literature has documented the mostly deleterious intergenerational consequences of paternal incarceration, but less research has considered heterogeneity in these relationships. In this article, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,065) to estimate the heterogeneous relationship between paternal incarceration and children’s problem behaviors (internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and early juvenile delinquency) and cognitive skills (reading comprehension, math comprehension, and verbal ability) in middle childhood. Taking into account children’s risk of experiencing paternal incarceration, measured by the social contexts in which children are embedded (e.g., father’s residential status, poverty, neighborhood disadvantage) reveals that the consequences—across all outcomes except early juvenile delinquency—are more deleterious for children with relatively low risks of exposure to paternal incarceration than for children with relatively high risks of exposure to paternal incarceration. These findings suggest that the intergenerational consequences of paternal incarceration are more complicated than documented in previous research and, more generally, suggest that research on family inequality consider both differential selection into treatments and differential responses to treatments.     

Parenting as A “package deal”: Relationships,fertility, and nonresident father involvement among unmarried parents

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a “package deal” in which a father’s relationship with his child is contingent on his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partner fertility among unmarried parents using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a recent longitudinal survey ofnonmarital births in large cities. We examine whether unmarried mothers’ and fathers’ subsequent relationship and parenting transitions are associated with declines in fathers ’ contact with their nonresident biological children. We find that father involvement drops sharply after relationships between unmarried parents end. Mothers’ transitions into new romantic partnerships and new parenting roles are associated with larger declines in involvement than fathers’ transitions. Declines in fathers’ involvement following a mother’s relationship or parenting transition are largest when children are young. We discuss the implications of our results for the well-being ofnonmarital children and the quality of nonmarital relationships faced with high levels of relationship instability and multiple-partner fertiliy.     

Consequences of family disruption on children’s educational outcomes in norway

Using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers, we examine the relationship between family disruption and children’s educational outcomes. We distinguish between disruptions caused by parental divorce and paternal death and, using a simultaneous equation model, pay particular attention to selection bias in the effect of divorce. We also allow for the possibility that disruption may have different effects at different stages of a child’s educational career. Our results suggest that selection on time-invariant maternal characteristics is important and works to overstate the effects of divorce on a child’s chances of continuing in education. Nevertheless, the experience of marital breakdown during childhood is associated with lower levels of education, and the effect weakens with the child’s age at disruption. The effects of divorce are most pronounced for the transitions during or just beyond the high school level. In models that do not allow for selection, children who experienced a father’s death appear less disadvantaged than children whose parents divorced. After we control for selection, however, differences in the educational qualifications of children from divorced and bereaved families narrow substantially and, at mean ages of divorce, are almost non-existent.     

The roles of child support enforcement and welfare in non-marital childbearing

This paper examines the effects of stronger child support enforcement and declines in welfare benefits on changes in non-marital childbearing between 1980 and 1996. Economic theory suggests that stricter child support enforcement will increase the costs of children for unwed fathers, making them less likely to have a child outside marriage. Reductions in welfare benefits also are expected to increase the costs of non-marital childbearing for both mothers and fathers. We examine these hypotheses, using aggregate state-level data and fixed effects regression models to identify the effects of policies on non-marital birth rates. We find that both stricter child support enforcement and declines in welfare benefits deter non-marital births. However, the estimated effects of child support enforcement are more robust and larger than those of welfare. The estimates imply that in the 1980–1996 period, increases in child support enforcement led to a decline in non-marital birth rates in the range of 6% to 9%, whereas decreases in welfare benefits led to a decline in the range of 2% to 4%. Received: 28 June 2000/Accepted: 17 September 2001     

The Evolution of Family Complexity from the Perspective of Nonmarital Children

We document the incidence and evolution of family complexity from the perspective of children. Following a cohort of firstborn children whose mothers were not married at the time of their birth, we consider family structure changes over the first 10 years of the child’s life—considering both full and half-siblings who are coresidential or who live in another household. We rely on detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin that include information on the timing of subsequent births to the mother and father, and detailed information on earnings, child support, and welfare. We find that 60% of firstborn children of unmarried mothers have at least one half-sibling by age 10. Our results highlight the importance of having fertility information for both fathers and mothers: estimates of the proportion of children with half-siblings would be qualitatively lower if we had fertility information on only one parent. Complex family structures are more likely for children of parents who are younger or who have low earnings and for those in larger urban areas. Children who have half-siblings on their mother’s side are also more likely to have half-siblings on their father’s side, and vice versa, contributing to very complex family structures—and potential child support arrangements—for some children.     

Incarceration and Household Asset Ownership

A considerable literature documents the deleterious economic consequences of incarceration. However, little is known about the consequences of incarceration for household assets—a distinct indicator of economic well-being that may be especially valuable to the survival of low-income families—or about the spillover economic consequences of incarceration for families. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how incarceration is associated with asset ownership among formerly incarcerated men and their romantic partners. Results, which pay careful attention to the social forces that select individuals into incarceration, show that incarceration is negatively associated with ownership of a bank account, vehicle, and home among men and that these consequences for asset ownership extend to the romantic partners of these men. These associations are concentrated among men who previously held assets. Results also show that post-incarceration changes in romantic relationships are an important pathway by which even short-term incarceration depletes assets.     

Family structure and the transition to early parenthood

With the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce in the last quarter of the twentieth century, an increasing proportion of children have been exposed to a variety of new family forms. Little research has focused on the consequences of childhood family structure for men’s transition to fatherhood or on the family processes that account for the effects of family structure on the likelihood that young women and men become first-time unmarried parents, what we now call “fragile families.” The data come from the linked Children and Young Adult samples of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), which provide information on the children of the women of the NLSY79 from birth until they enter young adulthood. Females growing up with a single parent and males experiencing an unstable family transition to parenthood early, particularly to nonresidential fatherhood for males. For males, the effects are strongly mediated by parenting processes and adolescent behaviors and are shaped by economic circumstances. Having experienced multiple transitions as a child is associated with a reduced likelihood that males father their first child within marriage and an increased likelihood that they become fathers within cohabitation, demonstrating how changes in family structure alter family structure patterns over time and generations.     

Fathers�� time investments in children: do sons get more?

This paper uses the 2003 American Time Use Survey to examine the effects of child gender on paternal time with children in married two-parent families. The results show that fathers of boys invest more time in children than those with only daughters and reduce their leisure time without children to do so. Boys get more of this time than girls in all-girl families and compared to their own sisters. Girls with brothers receive more of fathers’ time than girls with only sisters, but this is primarily in television watching, so whether this advantages them is open to question.     

An examination of paternal and maternal intergenerational transmission of schooling

More educated parents are observed to have better educated children. However, previous research has found conflicting results regarding the role of fathers and mothers: in most cases, a strong positive paternal effect was found with a negligible maternal effect; in fewer cases, opposite results were found. In this paper, I use a sample of Norwegian twins to evaluate the impact of sample size and sample selection on the estimates’ robustness: results concerning the effect of mother’s education are very sensitive to the sample size, while the selection of the sample seems to be a key to reconciling previous results.     

Gender, Social Change, and Living Arrangements Among Older Egyptians During the 1990s

We compare older Egyptian women’s and men’s propensities to live with unmarried children only, any ever-married children, and alone, and we assess “kin-keeping” versus “modernization” hypotheses about the effects of social change on living arrangements during 1988–2000. Socioeconomic differences among women and men accounted for much of their crude differences in living arrangements during the period. Propensities to live with any ever-married children declined, and propensities to live alone or with unmarried children only rose. Compared to men, women continued to live more often with any ever-married children and less often with unmarried children only, and the 1988 gender gap in solitary residence disappeared by 2000. Increasing coresidential demands from unmarried dependent children, less frequent coresidential support from ever-married children, and rapidly increasing rates of solitary living especially among older men suggest emerging needs for non-coresidential instrumental support, especially among older Egyptians who are economically disadvantaged.

Father by law: Effects of joint legal custody on nonresident fathers’ involvement with children

Family membership and household composition do not always coincide. Joint legal custody after divorce formalizes the relationship between fathers and children who live apart. Policymakers hope that explicit acknowledgment of nonresident fathers’ rights and responsibilities will increase their involvement with their children. I use prospective data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the association between joint legal custody and two aspects of nonresident fathers’ contributions to their children—the frequency of visits between fathers and children and child-support payments. The analysis examines approximately 160 families in which parents divorced between interviews conducted for Wave 1 (1987–1988) and Wave 2 (1992–1994) of the survey. I investigate the effects of joint legal custody holding constant physical custody or placement by restricting the analysis to children who live with their mothers most of the year. Controlling for socioeconomic status and the quality of family relationships before separation, fathers with joint legal custody see their children more frequently and have more overnight visits than do other fathers. The positive effect of joint legal custody on frequency of visits persists once unobserved differences among families are taken into account. Although fathers with joint legal custody pay more child support than those without joint legal custody, this difference lacks statistical significance when other family characteristics are taken into account. These findings support the view that joint legal custody may encourage some aspects of paternal involvement after divorce.     

Bringing birth-related paternal depression to the fore

OBJECTIVES: Maternal postpartum depression is a prevalent health disorder with important consequences to the family and child development. Research evidence demonstrates that fathers can also suffer from psychological distress in the postpartum period and that paternal depression has a detrimental effect on the child's behavioral and emotional development. This study aims to review the current literature available about birth-related paternal depression. METHOD: A literature search from 1980 to 2007 was conducted through Medline electronic database, using the following Mesh terms: postpartum, postnatal, depression, fathers and paternal. Studies on maternal postpartum depression that examined issues related to paternal depression were also selected. RESULTS: Understanding about paternal depressive disorders during the postnatal period has advanced considerably in the last decade. Various studies demonstrate that birth-related paternal depression is a significant problem and closely associated with maternal depressive symptoms. Children of depressive fathers are also at risk for emotional and behavioral problems. CONCLUSIONS: Men may suffer from psychological distress after childbirth and birth-related paternal depression is not a rare phenomenon. Since this disorder, also called 'paternal postpartum depression', presents potential deleterious effects for the child, an increased level of public health awareness and scientific interest is warranted. In addition, a more detailed assessment of fathers during the postnatal period is recommended, especially when their partners are also depressed, so that the condition will be promptly recognized and treated.     

Informal Networks Social Capital of Fathers: What Does the Social Engagement Survey Tell Us?

Using the General Social Survey on Social Engagement conducted by Statistics Canada in 2003, this paper examines social capital derived from informal networks and its variation among men categorized as: (1) men with no children, and (2) men living with children in (a) intact, (b) step, and (c) lone parent families. The focus on men stems from a concern that their role in families has not been as extensively studied as that of women. The results show that married men living with children have higher social capital – measured in terms of the number of friends, relatives, and neighbors, and in their level of trust in them – than lone fathers or step fathers in cohabiting unions. Compared to child-free men, married fathers have higher social capital but also tend to have friends who are more similar to themselves in age, education, or income.     

Paternal Incarceration and Adolescent Social Network Disadvantage

Previous research has suggested that adolescent peers influence behavior and provide social support during a critical developmental period, but few studies have addressed the antecedents of adolescent social networks. Research on the collateral consequences of incarceration has explored the implications of parental incarceration for children’s behavioral problems, academic achievement, health, and housing stability, but not their social networks. Using network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I find that adolescents with recently incarcerated fathers are in socially marginal positions in their schools and befriend more-marginal peers than other adolescents: their friends are less advantaged, less academically successful, and more delinquent than other adolescents’ friends. Differences in network outcomes are robust to a variety of specifications and are consistent across race and gender subgroups. This study advances the social networks literature by exploring how familial characteristics can shape adolescent social networks and contributes to the collateral consequences of incarceration literature by using network analysis to consider how mass incarceration may promote intergenerational social marginalization.