In‐Hospital Paternity Establishment and Father Involvement in Fragile Families

This article assesses the effectiveness of in‐hospital paternity establishment, a federal requirement since 1993. We avoid biases in previous studies by using a national sample of nonmarital births (N= 3,254), by including detailed controls for characteristics of unwed mothers and previously unavailable controls for characteristics of fathers, and by estimating reduced form models of the effects of strong paternity establishment regimes. We find that paternity establishment rates are now quite high—69%—and that 6 of 7 paternities are established in the hospital. Even after controlling for previously unavailable characteristics, establishing paternity (in and outside the hospital) is significantly and positively associated with formal and informal child support payments and father‐child visitation. These results hold up in the reduced form models.     

PATERNITY LEAVE AND FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT WITH THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN

Unlike many European countries, the US has no national paternity leave policy giving fathers the right to take paid time off work following the birth (or adoption) of a child. Despite this, prior research suggests that many fathers do take some time off work after a child is born. However, little is known about the determinants, circumstances or consequences of paternal leave-taking. In this paper, we use the first wave of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS–B), a new nationally representative panel study of over 10,000 children born in 2001, to examine these questions. We make use of ECLS–B questions asked directly of resident fathers pertaining to their participation in a range of child care-taking activities, as well as a rich set of measures about the father, mother and child. We find that the overwhelming majority of fathers take at least some leave at the birth of their child, but that the length of that leave varies a good deal. Our results also indicate that fathers who take longer leave are more involved in child care-taking activities nine months later.     

Child Support in Immigrant Families

In this study, we use nationally representative data from the U.S. Current Population Survey-Child Support Supplement (N = 28,047) to examine differences in nonresident fathers’ material contributions between children of native and foreign-born mothers. We focus on contributions provided through the formal child support system (whether the mother has a child support agreement and the amount received), as well as support provided informally (the amount of informal cash and whether she receives any in-kind support). We control for a variety of individual and household characteristics, including whether the nonresident father lives in a different state or in a different country. We find that foreign-born mothers are much less likely to have a child support agreement than native-born mothers, but have similar amounts of formal support, once an agreement is in place. Compared to native-born mothers, foreign-born mothers are also much less likely to receive in-kind support, but this difference is completely explained by fathers’ distance from the child. Foreign-born mothers do not differ at all on the amount of informal cash support received from fathers. Nonresident fathers’ residence outside the U.S. is an important mechanism through which nativity affects the likelihood of having a child support order and receiving any in-kind support, but not the amount of formal support (given an order) or the amount of informal cash support. Aggregate comparisons mask important differences within the foreign-born group by mothers’ and children’s citizenship status, years in the U.S., and region of origin.     

Patterns of Attachment and Maternal Discourse Effects on Children's Emotion Understanding From 3 to 5 Years of Age

Two studies examined the influence of maternal discourse style and security of attachment, and their interaction, on preschoolers’ emotion understanding. The first, with 3‐year‐olds, unexpectedly found no significant prediction of emotion understanding from attachment and discourse, and the interaction of the predictors yielded theoretically unpredicted associations with emotion understanding. Consequently, measures of attachment and emotion understanding were obtained again on these children at age 5 in a second study. At this age, consistent with expectations, secure attachment predicted higher emotion understanding, especially in the context of maternal use of elaborative discourse from the earlier assessment. The findings suggest that during the period of significant representational advance between ages 3 and 5, the influence of maternal discourse and attachment security are developmentally transformed as children's conceptions of psychological states rapidly change. By age 5, however, maternal elaborative discourse in the context of attachment security fosters deeper emotion understanding in preschoolers.     

Effects of Welfare Participation on Marriage

We investigate the widely held premise that welfare participation causes women to refrain from marriage. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (N = 3,219), we employ an event history approach to study transitions to marriage among mothers who have had a non-marital birth. We find that welfare participation reduces the likelihood of transitioning to marriage (hazard ratio is .67, p < .01), but only while the mother is receiving benefits. Once the mother leaves welfare, past receipt has little effect on marriage. We infer that the negative association between welfare participation and subsequent marriage reflects temporary economic disincentives rather than an erosion of values.     

Cyclical Cohabitation Among Unmarried Parents in Fragile Families

Building on past research suggesting that cohabitation is an ambiguous family form, the authors examined an understudied residential pattern among unmarried parents: cyclical cohabitation, in which parents have multiple cohabitation spells with each other. Using 9 years of panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,084), they found that 10% of all parents with nonmarital births and nearly a quarter of those living together when the child is 9 years old are cyclical cohabitors. Cyclically cohabiting mothers reported more material hardships than mothers in most other relationship patterns but also reported more father involvement with children. On all measures of child well‐being except grade retention, children of cyclically cohabiting parents fared no worse than children of stably cohabiting biological parents and did not differ significantly from any other group.     

Wealth, race/ethnicity, and children's educational outcomes

We examine the extent to which disparities in wealth by race/ethnicity are related to gaps in children's educational outcomes, and find that family socio-demographics and parental resources account for a substantial proportion of black/white and Hispanic/white disparities in children's participation in gifted programs, extracurricular activities and grade retention. Black children, however, continue to face high risk of expulsion or suspension from school relative to white children even in models that control for a rich set of socio-demographic and economic characteristics. The adjusted risk of expulsion and suspension faced by Hispanic children is found to be lower than that for white children. Indicators of wealth, after controlling for all other factors, had statistically significant associations with all outcomes except a child's suspension or expulsion from school. Having a checking or savings account was independently associated with participation in gifted programs and extracurricular activities.     

Fathers' Involvement with Their Nonresident Children and Material Hardship

Children in single-parent families, particularly children born to unmarried parents, are at high risk for experiencing material hardship. Previous research based on cross-sectional data suggests that father involvement, especially visitation, diminishes hardship. This article uses longitudinal data to examine the associations between nonresident fathers' involvement with their children and material hardship in the children's households. Results suggest that fathers' formal and informal child support payments and contact with their children independently reduce the number of hardships in the mothers' households; however, only the impact of fathers' contact with children is robust in models that include lagged dependent variables or individual fixed effects. Furthermore, cross-lagged models suggest that material hardship decreases future father involvement, but future hardship is not diminished by father involvement (except in-kind contributions). These results point to the complexity of these associations and to the need for future research to focus on heterogeneity of effects within the population.