Patterns and Predictors of Coparenting After Unmarried Parents Part

Nonmarital childbearing has increased dramatically during the past several decades, and the majority of unmarried couples will break up while their child is still young. As a result, many children will be raised by their biological parents living apart, ideally working together as effective coparents. In this article, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N 1,193) to describe the trajectories of coparenting over 6 years following the end of a nonmarital relationship and to identify individual and interpersonal characteristics associated with better coparenting over time. Results from growth mixture models (GMMs) suggest that there are 4 primary trajectories of coparenting over time, and results from multinomial logit models show that couples' race/ethnicity, maternal health, and parents' relationship and fertility characteristics are the most salient predictors of coparenting trajectories. These results highlight the heterogeneity of parents' interaction vis-a`-vis their common child after a nonmarital union dissolves and point to the challenges of supporting families and children amid high instability. The rise in nonmarital childbearing is by now well-known, with the fraction of births occurring outside of marriage rising sixfold in the latter half of the 20th century (Ventura & Bachrach, 2000). Today, 41% of all births in the United States occur to unmarried parents, with even higher proportions among racial and ethnic minorities (Hamilton, Martin, & Ventura, 2012). Although many unmarried parents are cohabiting when their child is born, about two thirds will be living apart by the time their child turns five (Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008). Therefore, parents' ability to cooperate effectively in rearing their common child— known as coparenting—after their romantic relationship ends is an important aspect of family life for children born to unmarried parents. Indeed, coparenting has been shown to facilitate nonres- ident fathers' involvement with their children (Carlson et al., 2008; Sobolewski & King, 2005), and may have positive implications for children's well-being and development. While studies from the 1980s onward have explored the nature of coparenting for biological parents living apart after a divorce (Ahrons, 1981; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980), less well understood is how parents interact vis-a`-vis their common child after a nonmarital dissolution. In this article, we extend the recent literature about nonmarital families by exploring the patterns and predictors of coparenting after union dissolution using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. First, we provide new evidence about the levels and trajectories of coparenting among couples who break up following an unmarried birth, utilizing growth mixture models (GMMs) to identify the dominant patterns of coparenting across three waves of data over 6 years. Second, we evaluate the individual and interpersonal characteristics associated with consistently high and consistently low levels of coparenting (as compared with other trajectories); this is important for policy and program development in order to identify key risk factors that might be used to target parents for interventions designed to enhance coparenting. Overall, this re- search provides new evidence about how parents jointly carry out their responsibility of child rearing amid the instability that is now typical after a nonmarital birth, as well as the factors that may encourage or deter such.