Parental beliefs about nonresident fathers' obligations and rights.

We examine whether parents rely on principles of equity or equality in making judgments about nonresident fathers' obligations and rights. The data are taken from the first wave of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The analysis sample includes 4,304 new mothers and 3,414 new fathers. Results indicate that fathers perceive obligations and rights as independent concerns (equality principle), whereas mothers see obligations and rights as linked (equity principle). The findings raise questions about previous claims that women favor equality principles, whereas men favor equity principles. They also underscore the importance of considering gender differences in perceptions of fathers' rights and obligations in designing effective child support and visitation policies. Key Words: child support, decision making, gender, nonresident father, visitation. Increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing during the past 30 years have led to increases in the proportion of children living apart from a biological parent, usually the father. Whereas in 1970, about one third of children were expected to live apart from their fathers by the time they reached 16 (Bumpass, 1984), by 2000, more than 50% of children were expected to experience father absence (Heuveline, Timberlake, & Furstenberg, 2003). When parents live with their child, they automatically share their income with the child. They also see the child on a regular basis and make decisions about how the child is raised. In contrast, when parents live apart from their child, financial support and decisionmaking power are no longer automatic but must be determined by the courts. Thus, as nonresident fathers have become more common, researchers and policymakers have become increasingly interested in whether nonresident fathers provide financial support to their child and share decision-making power with the child's mother. A sizeable literature examines the extent and determinants of child support payments from nonresident parents (Garfinkel, McLanahan, Meyer, & Seltzer, 1998). A second body of literature examines the determinants of father involvement among nonresident fathers and the extent to which paying child support and spending time with a child go together (McLanahan & Carlson, 2004; Seltzer, 1998). Much less attention has been given to how parents perceive the obligations and rights of nonresident fathers and, in particular, to how perceptions are moderated by gender. Understanding these perceptions is important not only because it helps us understand behavior (Lin, 2000) but also because disagreements about child support and visitation are likely to be a major source of parental conflict after divorce or union dissolution. Previous studies indicate that exposure to persistent parental conflict reduces child well-being (see Amato, 2000; Seltzer, 1994, for a review of the literature). A better understanding of the sources of conflict after union dissolution may help reduce disagreements in the future. Finally, understanding the principles that underlie parental beliefs about the obligations and rights of nonresident parents may lead to more effective child support and visitation policies. In this article, we attempt to fill the gap in the literature by examining parental beliefs about nonresident fathers' obligations and rights. We use distributive justice theory to identify two key principles underlying perceptions of fairness and to develop hypotheses about how parents view nonresident fathers' obligations and rights. To test these hypotheses, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which is following a cohort of children born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. These data contain information from both mothers and fathers about the conditions under which nonresident fathers should be required to pay child support and should have rights to visit and make decisions about how the child is raised. …