Parenting Practices of Resident Fathers: The Role of Marital and Biological Ties

Abstract

This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,098) to examine differences in the parenting practices of four types of resident fathers, defined by their biological relationship to a focal child and their marital status with regard to the focal child’s mother. Regression results suggest that biological and social (i.e., stepfathers or mothers’ cohabiting partners) fathers differ significantly, and in some unexpected ways, on most measures of parenting. However, a considerable portion of these differences can be explained by variation in the background characteristics of the individuals and families in each group. Additionally, difference-in-difference analyses reveal a stronger link between marriage and higher quality parenting practices among social fathers than among biological fathers.

The Effects of Paternal Imprisonment on Children’s Economic Well-Being

“…This is the first study in the field to conduct this type of analysis, and the innovation is important because a high proportion of unwed mothers have children with more than one partner (Carlson and Furstenberg 2006;Cancian, Meyer, and Cook 2011). Due to reduced support and family resources, the imprisonment of subsequent partners can have negative effects on all the mother's children (Berger et al 2008;Berger and Langton 2011). Finally, the study testifies to the importance of a cross-systems approach.…”

Testing the Economic Independence Hypothesis: The Effect of an Exogenous Increase in Child Support on Subsequent Marriage and Cohabitation

“…First, because relatively few mothers were married, we do not have the sample size to support estimates that distinguish between husbands who were fathers and those who were not. Second, although biological and nonbiological fathers may behave differently (Hofferth 2006;Hofferth and Anderson 2003), marriage is associated with more stable unions (Bumpass and Lu 2000) and greater pooling of resources than cohabitation (Hamplova and Le Broudais 2009;Winkler 1997), and we expect biological ties to be less important to the distribution of resources within marriage than within cohabiting unions (Berger et al 2008).…”

Socioemotional Development in Changing Families

“…Paternal involvement and coparenting engagement predicted the continuation of parental cohabitation over and above the quality of the parental relationships, initial expectations of marriage, and individual characteristics of the mothers, fathers, and children. Cohabiting stepfathers have also been found to spend less time with their stepchildren than married stepfathers (Hofferth & Anderson, 2003), even after demographic variation is controlled for (Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008).…”