Longitudinal Patterns of Nonresident Fathers’ Involvement: The Role of Resources and Relations

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examined patterns of nonresident father involvement 1 and 3 years after a nonmarital birth (N = 893). Cluster analyses were used to determine patterns of involvement across different father behaviors. About half of fathers displayed low involvement when children were 1 and 3 years old, one fourth of fathers maintained high involvement, and equal remaining proportions increased or decreased involvement over time. Multinomial logistic analyses indicated that better relationships between parents were associated with consistently high versus low involvement. Better relationships with each others' extended family also predicted remaining highly involved and increasing involvement over time. Parents' romantic relationship status was closely associated with patterns of involvement. Key Words: early childhood, family relations, fatherhood, nonresidential parents. Rising rates of nonmarital childbirth over the past 40 years have increased political and public con- cern over nonresident fathers' involvement in children's lives. Among the public policy initiatives aimed at increasing father involvement, one approach, exemplified by programs that comprise the federal Healthy Marriage initiatives, seeks to foster stable union formation among unwed parents (Dion, 2005; Ooms, Bouchet, & Parke, 2004). Fathers who coreside with their children are more involved on average in their daily lives than those who do not (Cabrera et al., 2004), suggesting programs that successfully promote union formation would also increase father involvement. Recent research on relationships among unwed couples suggests, however, that only a small percentage marry in the years following a nonmarital birth (Carlson, McLanahan, & England, 2004; Gibson-Davis, Edin, & McLanahan, 2005), suggesting many children bom to unwed parents will ultimately live apart from their fathers regardless of attempts by programs or parents to form stable unions. For these families, policies and programs should utilize routes other than union formation to encourage involvement between fathers and their noncustodial children. Programs such as those that comprise the Responsible Fatherhood initiative, which designates federal funding to encourage involvement among noncustodial fathers, focus on a few of these routes, including increasing unwed fathers' economic resources through education and employment, enforcing child support payment, and improving unwed parents' relationship quality through relationship skills education (Ooms et al., 2004). All of these factors are positively associated with father involvement (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2004; Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008; Landale & Oropesa, 2001; Nepomnyaschy, 2007; Rangarajan & Gleason, 1998), suggesting they are reasonable approaches to enhancing nonresident father contact with children. Few such policy initiatives consider the central role mat extended family members often play in the lives of unwed parents, however, particularly those who are young. A large percentage of unwed parents live widi their families of origin, particularly if they do not coreside with each other (Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2002), and it is common for their daily lives to be highly intertwined with those of their parents (Edin & Kefalas, 2005). In these contexts, the quality of relationship between mothers, fathers, and the parents of each could influence the fathers ' ability and desire to be involved with their children as much or more than the dyadic relationship between the birth mother and father. The present study investigates the associations between these factors and patterns of nonresident father involvement following a nonmarital birth. Specifically, we ask the following questions: (a) What are the patterns of nonresident father involvement in the 3 years after a nonmarital birth? (b) To what extent do fathers' economic resources, fathers' child support payment (formal and informal), parents' relationships, and parents' relationships with each others' extended family predict those patterns? …