Who Is the Residential Parent? Understanding Discrepancies in Unmarried Parents' Reports

Household-based surveys have been a main-stay of family demography and have shaped our understanding of family relationships in importantways.Thesesurveysprovideexcellent descriptive information about family members who live in the same household. In recent years, more information about family relationships that span more than one household has also become available as a result of large-scale, federally funded data collection efforts (Seltzer, 2011). Although these data have allowed researchers to better describe nonresident parents' relationshipswiththeirchildren,themorebasicquestion of whether children's residence is being measured accurately has received less empirical attention (Lin, Schaeffer, Seltzer, & Tuschen, 2004). The difficulty of measuring children's livingarrangementshasbeenwidelyacknowledged for families after divorce, and recent increases in the proportion of families formed outside of marriage are likely to have increased these measurement challenges (Cork & Voss, 2006; Seltzer, 2011). Within 3years of their child's birth, the majority of unmarried parents are living apart (McLanahan, 2009), yet little is known about the accuracy and consistency of unmarried parents' reports of their children's living arrangements in these circumstances.The way researchers measure children's living arrangements following a nonmarital birth is important for survey research as well as our understanding of the family relationships informed by these data. On the most basic level, measures of where children live are used to differentiate the "resident" and "nonresident" parent and to determine how many mothers as opposed to fathers fall into this category. Parents who are classified as "resident" may then be asked different survey questions than nonresident parents are asked, such as whether they are receiving or paying child support (Seltzer, 2011). Resident parents are also asked more often about the quality of their parenting, whereas nonresident parents are asked about the quantity of time they spend with their children (Pleck, 1997). These data are then used by social scientists as a basis for evaluating how children are being parented on a day-to-day basis, the financial help provided by parents who do not live in the child's household, and how both forms of support are associated with children'swell-being(Seltzer,2011).Measuring children's living arrangements is also important from a policy perspective because children's poverty status is based on a determination of the needs and income available in their primary residence (Lin et al., 2004). If children's residence is misidentified in household surveys, researchers may have an inaccurate assessment of the resources available to them (Lin et al., 2004). The ability to assess parents' eligibility for means-tested benefits such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Medicaid is similarly tied to how children's primary residence is measured, because these benefits are differentially distributed to resident and nonresident parents (Cancian, Meyer, & Han, 2011; Sorensen & Zibman, 2001).Despite the importance of measuring chil- dren's residence accurately, recent studies show that divorced mothers and fathers who live apart often give inconsistent reports of where their children live (e.g., Cork & Voss, 2006; Lin et al., 2004). Discrepancies in parental reports may not be surprising, given the significant challenges in measuring nonresident fathers' involvement with children (Argys et al., 2007; Marsiglio, Day, & Lamb, 2000; Pasley & Braver, 2004; Roggman Boyce, Cook, & Cook, 2002). Argys et al. (2007), for example, analyzed information from six large data sets and found substantial differences in the levels of contact nonresi- dent fathers were reported to have with their children. Inconsistencies were often related to differences in how the questions and response categories were worded across surveys and dif- ferences in how irregular patterns of contact were measured, leading the authors to conclude that greater attention to the design of survey questions was warranted. …