Just Get Me to the Church: Assessing Policies to Promote Marriage among Fragile Families

This article examines alternative approaches to encourage family formation among fragile families, including higher cash benefits, more liberal acceptance of welfare applications, more effective child support enforcement, and efforts to increase education and employment of low-income parents. We examine these approaches by refining and expanding previous work on a generalized logit model of the mothers’ actual family formation outcomes, in a hierarchy that includes father absence, father involvement, cohabitation, and marriage. Refinements involve measurements of family formation that make our results more comparable to other studies and new controls for previous fertility with the father of the focal child and with another partner (multiple partner fertility). We estimate these models using interim data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being 12 month follow-up Survey. The results indicate that, unlike their effects on mature families, cash benefits increase the odds of family formation (short of marriage) among fragile families and effective child support enforcement increases the odds of marriage. However, the father’s employment status outweighs the effects of these traditional income security policies on family formation, because it affects outcomes all along the hierarchy, including marriage, and its effects are larger. Unlike previous research, our data on previous fertility enables us to separate the effects of previous children in common from multiple partner fertility on family formation. Both significantly affect family formation (though in opposite directions), but even after including these variables, blacks, who are more likely to bring children from previous unions into a new union, have substantially lower odds of cohabitation and marriage than non-Hispanic whites.

The M Word: The Rise and Fall of Interracial Coalitions On Fathers And Welfare Reform

Buoyed by the success of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), whose time limits and work requirements played a large role in the reduction of the welfare rolls, conservative advocates of welfare reform are now moving to ensure that our welfare system reflects traditional family values as well. Responding to this sentiment, the Bush Administration is encouraging states to use TANF to support marriage promotion efforts and the Administration's 2002 budget includes $100 million in support of demonstration projects to promote marriage (source). By contrast, the$60 million President Bush had committed to support efforts to promote responsible fatherhood, not restricted to marriage, has been pared back to $20 million, along with cutbacks in other domestic initiatives that are needed to pay for the "war against terrorism."

Parental Incarceration and Child Wellbeing: Implications for Urban Families

Using a population-based, longitudinal family survey (N=4,898), we identify a set of economic, residential, and developmental risks particular to the children of incarcerated parents. We use parental reports of incarceration history, demographic background, and a rich set of child and family outcomes, in a series of multivariate regression models. Children of incarerated parents face more economic and residential stability than their counterparts. Children of incarcerated fathers also display more behavior problems, though other developmental differences are insignificant. Several family differences are magnified when both parents have been incarcerated. We find that incarceration identifies families facing severe and unique hardship. Given the prevalence of incarceration, this means a large population of children suffers unmet material needs, residential instability, and behavior problems. These risks may be best addressed by using the point of incarceration as an opportunity for intervention, and the administration of age-appropriate social services.

Understanding the Education Trajectories of Young Black Men in New York City: Elementary and Middle-School Years

Making targeted decisions about how, when, and where to intervene to improve educational outcomes for black males requires understanding the complex pathways that shape these outcomes. This study, undertaken for the Black Male Donor Collaborative, uses longitudinal data on a cohort of black males from New York City Schools to gain insights about the different possible student paths, with specific focuses on middle school and math scale scores

Unmarried Fathers’ Earnings Trajectories: Does Partnership Status Matter?

Married men earn more than unmarried men. Previous research suggests that marriage itself causes some of the difference, but includes few men who fathered children out of wedlock. This paper asks whether increasing marriage (and possibly cohabitation) following a non-marital birth is likely to increase fathers’ earnings and labor supply. The analyses are based on a new birth cohort study the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study which follows unmarried parents for the first five years after their child’s birth. Results provide some support for the idea that increasing marriage will lead to increased fathers’ earnings.Cohabitation, marriage, income, men, males, earnings, income, children

Advancing Postsecondary Success for Men of Color through Policy and Systems Change

Completion of higher education is of particular value to men of color. Through this achievement, they unlock their own potential, improve their career options and lifetime earnings, and enable themselves to best contribute to their families and communities. Beyond individual benefits, completing a postsecondary education is important to the overall prosperity and vitality of our nation, better enabling communities to create, innovate, sustain, and persevere. The skills and experiences acquired through the completion of a higher education degree or credential help to strengthen the nation's labor force and economic systems and contribute to every part of our national fabric. Moreover, children whose parents hold postsecondary degrees have better health outcomes and educational advantages. Often, they maintain or improve upon the economic status of their parents. So, it stands to reason that an investment in increasing the number of boys and men of color who complete higher education is an investment in our future collective and societal well-being

Parenting as a Package Deal: Relationships, Fertility, and Nonresident Father Involvement among Unmarried Parents

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a package deal, where a father’s relationship with his child is contingent upon his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partnered fertility among unmarried parents using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a recent longitudinal survey of nonmarital births in large cities. We examine whether unmarried mothers’ and fathers’ subsequent relationship and parenting transitions are associated with declines in fathers’ contact with their nonresident biological children. We find that father involvement drops sharply after relationships between unmarried parents end. Mothers’ transitions into new romantic partnerships and new parenting roles are associated with larger declines in involvement than fathers’ transitions. Declines in fathers’ involvement following a relationship or parenting transition are largest when children are young. We discuss the implications of our results given the high levels of relationship instability and multiple-partnered fertility among unmarried parents.Fragile families, childbearing, nonmarital childbearing, fartherhood, fathers

Beyond Absenteeism: Father Incarceration and its Effects on Children’s Development

High rates of incarceration among American men, coupled with high rates of fatherhood among men in prison, have motivated recent research on the effects of parental imprisonment on children’s development. We contribute to this literature using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the effects of paternal incarceration on developmental and school readiness outcomes for approximately 3,000 urban children. We estimate cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models that control not only for fathers’ basic demographic characteristics and a rich set of potential confounders, but also for several measures of pre-incarceration child development, and family fixed effects. We find that paternal incarceration is positively associated with children’s externalizing problems at age five. Results are mixed with respect to attention problems, and we find some evidence that children of incarcerated fathers experience less anxiety than their peers. The observed effects of incarceration on child behavioral problems are significantly stronger than the effects of other forms of father absence, suggesting that children with incarcerated fathers may require specialized support from caretakers, teachers, and social service providers.Fragile families, childbearing, nonmarital childbearing, fartherhood, fathers, incarceration

Unmarried fathers' earnings trajectories: does partnership status matter?

Married men earn more than unmarried men. Previous research suggests that marriage itself "causes" some of the difference, but includes few men who fathered children out of wedlock. This paper asks whether increasing marriage (and possibly cohabitation) following a non-marital birth is likely to increase fathers' earnings and labor supply. The analyses are based on a new birth cohort study—the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study—which follows unmarried parents for the first five years after their child's birth. Results provide some support for the idea that increasing marriage will lead to increase

Beyond absenteeism : father incarceration and child development

High rates of incarceration among American men, coupled with high rates of fatherhood among men in prison, have motivated recent research on the effects of parental imprisonment on children's development. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the relationship between paternal incarceration and developmental outcomes for approximately 3,000 urban children. We estimate cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models that control not only for fathers' basic demographic characteristics and a rich set of potential confounders, but also for several measures of pre-incarceration child development and family fixed effects. We find significant increases in aggressive behaviors among children whose fathers are incarcerated, and some evidence of increased attention problems. The estimated effects of paternal incarceration are stronger than those of other forms of father absence, suggesting that children with incarcerated fathers may require specialized support from caretakers, teachers, and social service providers. The estimated effects are stronger for children who lived with their fathers prior to incarceration, but are also significant for children of nonresident fathers, suggesting that incarceration places children at risk through family hardships including and beyond parent-child separation