Westat, Inc.
This study examines factors influencing noncustodial fathers' involvement
with their children after divorce, and focuses specifically on the quality of
the mother-father relationship. Two hypotheses guide this study. First, the
effect of the mother-father relationship on fathers' contact with their children
will diminish over the years following divorce. Second, the relationship
between the former spouses will have greater influence on fathers' involvement
in parental responsibilities than on actual father-child contact. The data are
from a longitudinal study called the Binuclear Family Research Project and were
derived from a sample of divorced couples drawn in 1979 from public
divorce-court records in Dane County, Wisconsin. Interviews were conducted at
three time points after the divorce, with the Time 3 interviews at 5 years
post-divorce. The sample included 64 parent pairs. The dependent variables
include a measure of parental involvement on eight parental activities and a
measure of the frequency and duration of father-child contacts. Each of these
dependent variables were measured according to both the mothers' and fathers'
reports and scores from each report were averaged together to form couples'
scores. The measure of the quality of the mother-father relationship was a
ten-item scale that tapped conflict. Control variables included the age of the
youngest child, parent education level, the remarriage of either parent,
proximity of fathers to their children, and the presence of boys in the family.
Analyses were performed separately for mothers and fathers. The results
indicate that, for both mothers and fathers, the quality of the parents'
relationships was positively related to fathers' involvement in parenting
activities at time 1, but the strength of this relationship diminished
thereafter. Similar results were observed regarding mothers' perceptions of the
quality of their relationship with the fathers and its effect on father-child
contacts. However, the results for fathers indicated that the mother-father
relationship as they perceived it had no effect on the frequency of father-child
contacts at time 1 or thereafter. Also, both the mother and father data
indicated that the effect of the quality of parents' relationships was stronger
for the extent of fathers' involvement in parenting activities than on
father-child contacts. The authors deduce from their results that the amount of
conflict between former spouses has an important influence on father's
involvement after divorce, particularly during the time shortly after divorce.
As far as contact between noncustodial fathers and their children, mothers'
perceptions about the mother-father relationship were shown to have a greater
influence than the fathers' perceptions, suggesting that mothers are regulating
the amount of father-child contact.
The author compared five perspectives on children's adjustment to divorce: "the
absence of the noncustodial parent, the adjustment of the custodial parent,
interparental conflict, economic hardship, and stressful life changes" (p.
23). He assessed the importance of each by developing hypotheses to test them
and then examining the results of over 180 existing studies to locate evidence
that would support or fail to support the hypotheses. He notes that "many
hypotheses have not been tested as often as one would like, and methodological
problems plague many of these studies" (p. 35). He concludes that "available
data indicate that ... the strongest and most consistent support is obtained for
the interparental conflict model .... however, this perspective does not tell
the entire story.... No single model ... can account fully for the pattern of
findings reported....These qualifications suggest the necessity of a larger
model that incorporates elements from all perspectives" (p. 35). He
suggests that "A general model of children's outcomes following divorce can
be developed around the concepts of resources and stressors.
Children's development can be viewed as being facilitated by the possession of
certain classes of resources. Major resources for children include parental
support (emotional support, practical help, guidance, supervision, and role
models) as well as parental socioeconomic resources" (p. 35). Marital
disruption affects children's lives because it places multiple stresses on them
and it "can interfere with children's ability to utilize parental resources"
(p. 35). Important factors are interparental conflict, loss of contact with
non-custodial parent, lower quality relationship with custodial parent,
disrupted ties with other supports due to geographic mobility, and loss of
income. "The total configuration of resources and stressors, rather than
the presence or absence of a particular factor, needs to be considered.
Implicit in the above model is the notion that one resource might compensate for
the lack of another. For example, economic hardship may not be problematic for
children who have a close relationship with a warm and competent custodial
parent....future research on children of divorce needs to model interactions
between stressors and resources; studying particular factors out of context,
rather than trying to grasp the larger pattern, will probably only generate more
findings that are inconsistent and contradictory" (p. 35-36).
This article reviews literature regarding noncustodial parents, focusing on
that which examines factors that influence outcomes for parent-child relations
after divorce and also on some methodological problems seen in the research
reviewed. The article begins by discussing research on visitation and payment
of child support. Most research on these issues relies on data provided from
custodial mothers, who tend to underestimate noncustodial fathers' involvement
and payment of support. Also discussed is that the findings of research on the
frequency with which noncustodial fathers visit their children, on the amount of
support that fathers pay, and on the financial situations of custodial mothers
are not consistent. Evidence regarding the relationship between father-child
contact and payment of child support is also inconclusive. Also discussed is
how parents' relationships after divorce affect the level of fathers'
involvement with their children and how mothers function as "gatekeepers"
of fathers' involvement. Arditti also points out that qualitative aspects of
the father-child relationship after divorce have not been addressed in much
research, citing the few examples of research considering such issues. Research
on noncustodial mothers is also reviewed and discussed, noting some differences
between findings regarding noncustodial mothers and fathers. Arditti concludes
by outlining a framework for integrating the research reviewed and suggesting
directions for future research.
This study was based on a sample of public divorce court records in two
counties in southwestern Virginia. Eligible subjects consisted of men who had
received a divorce between 1986 and 1990 and who had children. Fathers with
sole custody were excluded from the sample. In all, 212 divorced fathers
completed the questionnaires (a cooperation rate of 47 percent). The authors
used LISREL 7 to examine factors that affect father-child contact and to examine
the influence of frequency of visitation on the quality of the visitation and on
child support payment. The article never sufficiently defined the variables
that were used in the analysis. For example, it is not clear what items
constituted visitation quality. It appears that it was combination of problems
encountered during visitation and an assessment of how well the visits go.
Nevertheless, the article does try to examine relationships that merit more
attention. Authors found the following. One, fathers who lived nearby,
reported having higher levels of closeness to the child prior to divorce, and
those who had joint custody arrangements had more contact with their children
than other fathers. Socioeconomic status also had a strong direct and indirect
effect on level of contact with higher SES fathers more likely to see their
children more often. Two, visitation quantity had a strong direct influence on
visitation quality, but nonrecursive tests of the model indicated that quality
of visits does not affect quantity of visits. Given the lack of clarity with
respect to how quality is measured, this result may not hold for other studies
that use other definitions of quality. Three, neither visitation quantity nor
quality influenced child support payments. The authors infer from their results
that joint custody may promote more contact between fathers and children and
that more contact can promote better parent-child relations.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY), this
study examines the process of becoming eligible for and receiving child support
and also whether child support payments have beneficial effects on children's
well-being. The data pertain to one randomly selected child from each mother in
the NLSY sample. The authors point out that one disadvantage of these data is
that NLSY mothers are relatively young. Two subsamples of children were used.
The first was a group of children less than 12 months old at the time of the
1984 mother interview; it was used to describe those eligible for and receiving
child support. The second was used in multivariate analyses to study the
effects of child support on children's reading achievement and consisted of a
group of children younger than 6 at the time of the 1986 interview with mothers.
Using information on father's presence in the home, age-specific life tables
were constructed to describe children's likelihood of becoming eligible for
child support (i.e., living separately from their biological fathers) between
the ages of 0 and 4. The following characteristics were found to be associated
with having a higher probability of becoming eligible for child support: being
black, born to mothers less than 25 years old, having a mother with low
education, having a family with low income, and being born to parents who were
not married. The probability of receiving child support once eligible was found
to be higher among children in families with high incomes, whose fathers were
living with them at the time of their birth, and whose parents were married at
their birth. The study also examined the effect of child support on children's
reading achievement between 1986 and 1988, controlling for children's 1986
reading ability. This included exploring whether any beneficial effects of
child support were operating through fathers' contact and/or an increase in
mothers' incomes which in turn could allow her to decrease her work hours and to
enhance the home environment. The results suggested that girls whose parents
separated experienced a decline in achievement, regardless of child support
receipt. Boys were not affected by the parent separation. The results also
suggested that mother's work hours and the quality of the home environment had
no effect on reading achievement. Frequency of contact with the absent father
was also found to not affect reading achievement.
The focus of this study is an examination of the extent to which fatherhood
as a teenager (or with a teenage partner) and related decisions concerning
marriage and child support affect public tax burdens. The theoretical framework
for the study posits that if young men are able to time marriage and fatherhood
optimally, those with higher economic potential will delay marriage and
fatherhood to a later age because the cost to them of taking on these
responsibilities at an early age is greater. Thus, whether or not young men
father a child and whether or not they marry the mother in the event of a
pregnancy each have implications for the father's future earnings, the mother's
ability to support her child, and the cost to society in terms of the father's
income taxes and public support of the child. The data used in this study are
from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a nationally
representative sample of young men and women aged 14-21 in 1979. The data used
pertained to 4,231 male respondents. As a caution, the authors note that males
in the NLSY data set have been shown to have underreported births they fathered
by about 15 percent for all males, and 23 percent for black males.
Nevertheless, the results suggested that the lower the age at fatherhood, the
fewer years of education completed and the lower income and hours worked in the
labor market. Controlling for factors that could be associated with age at
fatherhood (e.g., parents' education level, race) diminished the effect of age
at fatherhood on the economic outcomes. Because the NLSY does not have data on
all mothers of the male respondents' children, data from birth certificates and
the 1988 Maternal and Infant Health Survey were used in a statistical matching
procedure to enable the estimation of some aspects of the costs of teenage
childbearing to the child and to society. The results suggested that for each
year that childbearing is delayed, the predicted income of the father and value
of child support is higher. Congruently, the study also provided some evidence
that when fathers' incomes and child support payments are higher, the amount of
public support paid to mothers is partially offset and the amount of income tax
generated increases.
This study examined whether adolescents' feelings of being caught between
parents helped to explain their postdivorce adjustment. It also identified
postdivorce factors that predicted to feelings of being caught. Finally, it
examined whether feelings of being caught explained or refined previously
documented relationships between other characteristics of the postdivorce family
(such as parental conflict) or the child (such as age or sex) and adolescent
outcomes. The data were from the Stanford Adolescent Custody Study, which
consisted of adolescents between the ages of 10 and 18 as of June 1989 whose
families had taken part in the earlier Stanford Child Custody Study. In all 522
adolescents from 365 families were interviewed by telephone approximately
four-and-one-half years after their parents' separation. All the families had
originally filed for divorce in two northern California counties between
September 1984 and March 1985. The study found that feelings of being caught
between parents affected the adolescents' postdivorce adjustment. Adolescents
who felt caught between their parents had higher levels of depression/anxiety
and exhibited more deviant behavior than adolescents who did not feel caught.
Although the strongest predictor of feeling caught was the relationship between
the two parents, not all adolescents whose parents had a poor relationship felt
caught and some adolescents whose parents had a good relationship did feel
caught between their parents. Older adolescents were more likely to feel caught
than younger adolescents; girls were more likely to feel caught than boys; and
adolescents who were close to only one parent or to neither parent were more
likely to feel caught than adolescents who were close to both parents. Amount
of contact with the non-custodial parent and type of residence (dual versus
sole) were not associated with feelings of being caught. However, adolescents
in dual residence arrangements whose parents had high conflict were particularly
likely to feel caught. Conversely, adolescents in dual residence arrangements
whose parents had good interparental cooperation were least likely to feel
caught, even less so than adolescents in sole custody arrangements whose parents
had good interparental cooperation. Their results also indicate that the
effects of the relationship between the two parents on adolescent outcomes is
entirely explained by the adolescents' feelings of being caught. The authors
also note that feelings of being caught and feelings of closeness to their
parents were related to adolescent outcomes. How the two constructs combined to
affect adolescent outcomes, however, was not clear. The authors recommend that
future research should try to disentangle the relationship between closeness to
parents, feelings of being caught, and adolescent adjustment after divorce.
This study examined several predictors of involvement of nonresidential
fathers with their children in teen mother families. Three hypotheses were
examined. First, it was hypothesized that absent fathers' involvement would be
lower when the teen mothers lived with their parents because the grandfathers
would assume the fathering role. Second, father involvement would be higher the
younger the children. And third, fathers with relatively more economic
resources would be more likely to be involved. Measures of the father's
involvement included the mother's rating of the quality of the father-child
relationship, the number of different types of child-related chores in which the
father participated, the mother's reports of how often she discussed the child
with the father, and a composite of these three measures representing a mean
score for fathering behavior. The data used in this study came from telephone
interviews with 289 mothers who had participated in a state of Wisconsin study.
The mothers in this study all had received AFDC benefits in 1985 and/or 1986,
had a child before age 20, and had a child the previous two years. These teen
mothers also either lived alone with their children or with one or both of their
parents; there were no other father figures in these homes besides the maternal
grandfather. The findings of the study suggest that (1) for each measure of
fathers' involvement, whether or not the teen mothers lived alone or with their
parents had no effect on the fathers' involvement; (2) higher levels of
involvement were observed among fathers with relatively young children; and (3)
involvement was also higher among fathers who were relatively young in age and
who were employed in the last year. The work experience of fathers had the
strongest effect of all the predictors tested. These results were also observed
in separate models for white and minority mothers. The authors conclude that
among teen mother families on welfare, the father's work behavior plays an
important role in his involvement with the children or in the mother's
permission for his involvement.
The purpose of this study was to examine whether parent-child relations are
differentially affected by sole and joint custody arrangements. It was
hypothesized that children in joint custody arrangements would have better
relationships with their parents than those in sole custody arrangements
(controlling for level of parental conflict), and that children whose parents
have frequent disagreements will have poorer relationships with their parents
than other children. The data for this study came from the National Incidence
Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART) which
consisted of telephone interviews from a random-digit-dialing sample. The data
used for this study were gathered from a random subsample of total NISMART
sample; the data were restricted to children from the subsample over age 5 whose
parents were divorced or never married and who had some type of custody
arrangement (n=160). The dependent variables used in the analyses included
measures of parent-to-child support and affection, child-to-parent support and
affection, and parent-child disagreements that were based upon reports of parent
survey respondents. Contrary to the researchers' hypotheses, the study results
indicate that children in joint custody arrangements exhibit less support and
affection toward their parents than children in sole custody. Also, custody
type had no significant effect on parent-to-child support and affection.
Consistent with the researchers' hypotheses, the results also suggested that
when parents have frequent disagreements, the parent-child relationship also
experiences high levels of disagreement. The authors discuss the unexpected
findings and conclude that more research is needed before joint custody
arrangements are definitively deemed beneficial for children.
Using data from intensive interviews with 214 welfare mothers living in
Chicago, Cambridge, San Antonio, or Charleston, this study examines why child
support enforcement efforts by states are ineffective in enforcing payments to
welfare mothers. Supplementary data from focus group interviews with 71
non-custodial fathers are also used. The four cities were chosen to represent a
range of state welfare systems nationally; Chicago provided AFDC benefits at
about the national average, Cambridge's benefits were one of the most generous
in the nation, and the benefits in Charleston and San Antonio were substantially
below the average. Interviews with mothers focused on how they supplemented
their AFDC benefits with unreported work or with contributions from family,
boyfriends, or absent fathers. The most important finding was that mothers
reported greater financial support from fathers than official statistics
indicate. About one-third of mothers reported receiving cash assistance from
fathers, only about half of whom received the money through official channels.
Another one-third reported receiving in-kind contributions such as clothing or
gifts. Also, about half of the mothers studied reported lying about or hiding
information about the father of at least one of their children from the child
support enforcement agency. This is against federal welfare rules regarding the
disclosure of information about fathers to child support enforcement officials.
African-American mothers were more likely to engage in this "covert
non-compliance" than white or Latina mothers. Of all the mothers not
complying with welfare rules, about 40 percent reported receiving covert
financial support from the fathers of their children, and the average amount of
support received was more than twice the amount they would have received through
the official system of enforcement. The author points out that, while these
practices are against the rules, it is a rational approach for many welfare
mothers. In addition to the potential for receiving more money than the child
support system would allow, other reasons for not complying with the welfare
rules were reported by the mothers. For instance, while economic situation of
some fathers were not stable enough for paying support on a regular basis,
mothers said they would rather receive sporadic payments than risk losing them
by subjecting the father to harassment by authorities or getting him put in
jail. Some mothers also reported that the covert payments enhanced the
father-child relationship. Some mothers also indicated using the formal system
as a negotiating tool, threatening to report the father to the enforcement
agency if he did not honor the informal payments. The findings also indicated
that some mothers pursue neither formal nor informal child support from fathers.
The mothers primarily reported four reasons for this: (1) fear of losing the
father-child emotional support if financial support was sought; (2) concern
about losing some authority for the right to parent their children exclusively;
(3) fears of physical abuse or other retaliation; or (4) they felt they had no
right to demand support since they had no long-term or meaningful relationship
with the father. Based on these findings, the author concludes that several
factors must be considered as contributors to the cause of poor fathers'
nonpayment of (official) child support, besides lax enforcement. She makes
several recommendations for improving the child support system for
welfare-reliant children: (1) set and collect child support payments adjusting
for drops and increases in fathers' earnings; (2) impose a more progressive
child support "tax" on earnings so that fathers who are very low
earners will be required to pay realistic amounts; (3) guarantee single mothers
whose ex-partners are paying through the system a minimum monthly benefit; (4)
improve the wages of unskilled and semi-skilled men and women.
This study examines the effect of father involvement on the well-being of
children born to teenage mothers, a population of children at risk of long-term
disadvantage. The data come from a study of 400 mostly black and poor teenage
parents in Baltimore that began in the mid-1960s to evaluate a comprehensive
care program for teenage mothers. These mothers were followed from pregnancy
until their children were preschoolers in 1972; subsequent follow-up interviews
were also conducted to collect data from the children in 1984 and 1987 when they
were between the ages of 15 and 17, and 18 to 21, respectively. About half of
the youth studied had lived with their biological father by age 18, on average
for about one-third of their childhood years and at younger ages. Among those
never living with their father, about three out of five lived with a stepfather
or father surrogate by age 18. On average, the youth spent about half of their
childhood years living with some type of father. Contact with and support from
fathers decreased between the preschool and adolescent years. As preschoolers,
about half of the youth were either living with or saw their father on a weekly
basis; by the end of their teens, about one-third of youth had that much contact
with fathers. The percentages of youth receiving child support from
nonresidential fathers decreased from about 80 percent at age 1, to about 30
percent at age 5, and about 15 percent at mid-adolescence. Over the study
period, fathers who had been married to the mothers were more likely than
never-married fathers to continue to pay child support.
In 1984 when the youth were 15 to 17, a minority of them reported close
attachments to father figures, whether the fathers were biological or some other
type. Also examined was whether the history of father involvement up to 1984
had any effect on youths' well-being in 1987. Indicators of well-being include
measures of educational and employment attainment, whether or not the adolescent
had a child before age 19, whether the adolescent had spent time in jail, and
signs of depression. The presence of fathers at home and regular contact with
fathers was found to have little to no effect on these well-being outcome
measures in the bivariate analyses. However, youth who reported having close
relationships with their fathers were faring better on each outcome measure and
this was most true for those with residential biological fathers and long-term
residential stepfathers. Multivariate analyses confirmed these results for the
most part. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of their
findings for public policy that may encourage close father-child relationships.
They also end with a reminder that their findings apply to blacks who were born
to teenage mothers and thus are not generalizable to other youth.
This study examines whether receipt of child support moderates the negative
effects of living in a single-mother family on children's educational
attainment. Using a sample of over 5,000 mothers and their 16- to 20-year-old
children from the 1988 Current Population Survey, the authors compare five
different educational outcomes of children in mother-only families to those of
children in two-parent (intact) families, specifically, "(1) the total
number of years of schooling completed, (2) whether or not a child has fallen
behind his or her age cohort in high school, whether or not a child is (3) a
high school dropout or (4) a high school graduate, and (5) whether or not a
child has entered college, given graduation from high school." The results
indicated that, controlling for several related socioeconomic variables,
children eligible for child support had lower educational attainment on all five
measures than did children in intact families. These differentials in
attainment were larger for eligible children who received no support than for
eligible children who received support, suggesting that receipt of child support
does to some extent mitigate the negative effects of living in a mother-only
family. These beneficial effects of child support were most apparent for
attainment at the high school level, specifically, for the probability of
dropping out of high school and for falling behind in grade-level. Looking at
only those children eligible for child support, it was also found that the
amount of support received was positively related to the educational attainment
measures studied, and that this effect was stronger than that for other types of
income sources. To investigate why child support appeared to have beneficial
effects on children's educational attainment, the authors examine whether the
effect is due to failure to control for contact with absent fathers or failure
to control for unobservable characteristics of mothers receiving support or of
fathers who pay support. The results suggested that the positive effect of
child support could not be attributed to contact with absent fathers. In
contrast, there was some evidence that unobserved variables may have been
influencing the child support effect. The authors conclude by encouraging
further research to examine whether the potential beneficial effects of child
support are beyond those of income and instead reflect characteristics of the
payers or recipients.
The purpose of this article is to describe a group of noncustodial fathers
who have had no contact with their children and are content with this situation.
The data for this study come from a 1992 survey of members of Parents Without
Partners (PWP) that was included in the PWP membership magazine. PWP is "the
largest self-help group for single parents in the United States." Members
of PWP who had little or no contact with their children were asked to complete
the survey and mail it to the survey author. There were 14 fathers responding
to the questionnaire who indicated that they were not interested in having more
contact with their children. In contrast, there were 89 fathers who indicated
that they wanted more contact. Almost all of the father respondents were white
(96 percent), their average age was 45, and the average duration of their
separation was nine years. Among the fathers not wanting more contact with
their children, half indicated that "their own issues" were reasons
for the lack of contact with their children. Responses to open-ended questions
described the reasons in more detail. This study also compared the fathers who
did not want more contact their children to those who did. There was some
indication that a history of domestic violence was more common among fathers not
wanting more contact than among the fathers wanting more contact (this
difference was not statistically significant, however). Fathers who did not
want more contact with their children were also found to have been less involved
in their children's care before the marital separation, to feel "indifferent"
about their children, to think their children also felt indifferent about them,
and to not have kept informed about their children's well-being. The author
concludes by hypothesizing that some fathers may withdraw from their children's
lives because they feel rejected and feel they are unimportant to their
children. This may be a result of factors that originated during the marriage
(e.g., domestic violence, lack of involvement in child care) rather than, or in
addition to, factors associated with the marital separation itself. The author
suggests that therapeutic efforts to involve fathers with their children "be
geared toward keeping the father open to changes in his relationship with his
child as well as in his own feelings about himself."
This study concerns children in maritally-disrupted families and explores
how variations in children's experiences with coresident adult men (i.e.,
stepfathers, cohabiting partners, grandfathers, returning biological fathers)
are related to their verbal-intellectual functioning and psychosocial
disfunctioning. It compares children in intact families to children who have
experienced five different longitudinal patterns of coresidence with adult men:
the "no male" pattern in which no coresident male is present in the
child's household; the "reunited father" pattern in which fathers
leave the home for a brief time but return; the "stepfather" pattern
in which children experience their mothers' remarriage or cohabitation and have
little time when no significant adult male is at home; the "grandfather"
pattern in which children live for a time with their mother and grandparents;
and the "chaotic" pattern in which children experience no stability
with respect to a reorganization of their nuclear family or coresidence with
grandparents. The data for this study come from the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth (NLSY) which includes interviews with a panel of young women
aged 14 to 21 in 1979 and interviewed yearly thereafter through 1986. Children
of these women were also interviewed in 1986. The combined mother and child
data, with the child as the unit of analysis, were used in this study; there
were 1,357 children age 4 to 6 in the specific subsample used. Note that
because of the nature of the NLSY sample, the children in this study were all
born to relatively young mothers.
The results showed that most of the children (about 70 percent) from
disrupted families experienced one of the patterns of coresidence with adult
males during the period examined; the type of pattern varied by the ethnicity of
the child. The results also showed that children from the disrupted families
who experienced different patterns of coresidence with adult males were not
significantly different from children in intact families over the same period
with respect to verbal-intellectual functioning, controlling for child's gender
and ethnicity, a composite variable measuring "maternal resources,"
and average household size. The model of psychosocial dysfunctioning using the
same controls plus child's age indicated a significant interaction between the "grandfather"
pattern and the child's ethnicity: white children experiencing "grandfather"
pattern exhibited higher levels of dysfunction than other children. No other
significant differences in psychosocial functioning according to coresidence
pattern were observed. The authors attribute the greater problems among white
children in the grandfather pattern to stronger norms of nuclear family
independence among white families than black families. The authors also discuss
the findings that most children experiencing the various patterns of coresidence
did not differ from the children in intact families on the outcome measures,
suggesting that during the initial adjustment period after marital dissolution,
the absence of a father-figure or the presence of biological-father-substitutes
appear to have no influence on most children's intellectual or psychosocial
functioning.
This study examines whether the effect of child support on children's
educational attainment changed between 1979 and 1988, a period during which
government efforts to enforce child support increased with the passage of new
laws. Previous research has found that child support has a stronger positive
effect on children's educational attainment than other forms of income. This
has often been attributed to unobservable factors such as fathers' interest in
their children's development. The authors propose that their analysis is a
simulated "natural experiment" for investigating fathers' unobservable
characteristics that may influence whether they voluntarily pay child support.
Presumably, if over the 1979-1988 period reluctant payers make up a larger
proportion of all payers and less willing payers have less interest in their
children's well-being (and the payment of child support does not affect fathers'
interest in their children), then the strength of the observed positive effect
of child support on children's education should decrease over this period.
The data used for this study come from the 1979 and 1988 Current Population
Surveys and pertain to mothers and their eldest children between the ages of 16
and 19. Three measures of children's educational attainment are used: years of
schooling completed, whether or not the child is behind in or has dropped out of
high school, and whether or not the child has graduated from high school. The
results lent support to the hypothesis that the positive effect of child support
diminished between 1979 and 1988 as more fathers reluctant to pay child support
entered the payment system. Specifically, the study found that in 1979,
relative to children in intact families, the receipt of child support totally
eliminated the disadvantage of children in single-mother families as far as
years of schooling completed and the chance of being behind in school, and
eliminated 70 percent of their decreased likelihood of graduating from high
school. In contrast, in 1988, child support eliminated approximately half of
the disadvantage in years of school completed and likelihood of being behind,
and had no effect on the chance of graduating from high school. The authors
conclude that while "the results suggest that child support represents in
part some unobservable aspects of the father-child relationship which are not as
positive among reluctant payers as among voluntary compliers,... other
explanations for the decline in the effectiveness of child support cannot be
ruled out." One explanation includes the decline in men's earnings, which
suggests that a given level of child support may represent a lower amount of
noncustodial father's income.
Author reviews what existing literature reveals about the role of the
following factors on children's adjustment following divorce: parental
conflict, adjustment of the custodial parent, access and closeness to the
noncustodial parent, and type of custody arrangement. Three general types of
child outcomes were considered: externalizing problems (e.g., aggressive,
impulsive, and antisocial behaviors, problem behaviors, poor peer relationships,
less compliance with authority figures); internalizing behaviors (anxiety,
depression, withdrawal), and intellectual and academic functioning. The most
consistent and reliable findings concern externalizing behaviors. With respect
to parental conflict, she notes that such conflict can directly influence
children's "emotional and behavioral adjustment through modeling processes"
and may indirectly affect children through lowering the quality of the
parent-child relationship (pages 32-33). She found that conflict need not have
negative consequences if parents "avoid direct, aggressive expressions of
their conflict in front of the child or use compromise styles of conflict
resolution" (p. 35). Children are most affected if they feel caught in the
middle between their two parents. The adjustment of the custodial parent on
children's adjustment after divorce "is a central one only barely studied
thus far" (p. 37). Studies have found maternal depression, anxiety,
psychological symptoms, social adjustment, and self-esteem are related to
children's adjustment. The author recommends that studies include several
objective measures of parental adjustment in future studies. She notes that
almost no studies have examined paternal adjustment on children and no studies
have examined the "effect and interaction between both parents' adjustment,
conflict, time with both parents, and residence" on children (p. 37). With
respect to access and closeness to the noncustodial parent on children's
adjustment, the evidence is mixed or inconclusive. Finally, custody status by
itself does not affect children's adjustment following a divorce.
This study examines whether children with highly involved nonresident
fathers benefit compared to children with less involved fathers. The forms of
involvement addressed in this study are visitation and child support payment.
The data for this study are from the child supplement to the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The analysis focuses on children living in
households with their mothers who had a father living elsewhere in 1988. The
independent variable of fathers' visitation is a categorical variable indicating
the number of times in the past 12 months the child has seen his or her father,
ranging from never to almost every day. The other independent variable of child
support is an indicator of the amount of money (in thousands of dollars)
received in the past calendar year. Control variables include the child's sex,
race, birth order, mother's marital status, region of residence, distance from
father, mother's education, household income, and time since divorce. The
dependent variables indicating child well-being consist of five scaled
assessments that measure (1) behavioral problems, (2) perceived scholastic
competence, (3) feelings of self-worth, (4) mathematics achievement, and (5)
reading achievement, plus several individual measures of school-related
behaviors (e.g., scholastic standing, suspension status), trouble-related
behaviors (e.g., lied to parents, stolen something), and emotional health (e.g.,
seen psychiatrist). The results indicated that father visitation was not
beneficial for any of the aspects of child well-being examined. Father
visitation was significantly related to only one well-being measure, and it
indicated that visitation is associated with children staying out later than
parents said they could. On the other hand, higher amounts of child support
were related to beneficial academic outcomes: higher perceived scholastic
competence and higher reading and math achievement. Higher child support
payments were also related to children being less likely to report that their
parents visited school because they did something wrong. However, an unexpected
result was also observed: higher child support payments were also associated
with mothers' reports of being told their child needed mental help. The author
points out that the findings are consistent with previous research that found no
benefits of father visitation for children's well-being and positive effects of
child support limited to the realm of academic achievement. However, none of
the behavioral measures showed benefits from fathers' involvement, contrary to
prior research. There appears to be limited evidence that nonresident father
involvement has positive benefits for children, except for possibly the benefits
of child support for children's academic outcomes.
Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this study
investigates whether children in single parent families who receive higher child
support payments attain higher levels of education. The children in the PSID
sample were ages 2 to 8 in 1968. The specific outcome variables examined are
the number of grades completed and the probabilities of high school graduation
and of college entry by age 21. The authors outline four hypotheses: (1) Higher
child support payments increase total family income which is associated with
increased educational attainment for young adults; (2) "Child support has a
positive effect on attainment because it enables mothers to reduce reliance on
[income] sources that have negative effects," (e.g., working more hours
than preferred); (3) "Child support has positive effects on children's
educational outcomes, independent of its effect on total income or on mothers'
use of other income sources"; (4) "Child support income is associated
with prior characteristics of fathers, mothers, or their relationship that may
have positive effects on children." The results pertaining to the number
of grades children completed by age 21 suggested that total income did not have
a significant effect on grades completed; however, when income sources were
differentiated, the amount of child support received did have a positive effect
on grades completed, controlling for income received from welfare and maternal
earnings (each of which had no significant effect). The positive effect of the
amount of child support payments on grades completed could not be attributed to
the simple receipt of any payment or fathers' education level. Similar results
were observed for the effect of child support level on the probabilities of high
school graduation and college entry. Based upon these results, the authors also
illustrated the effects of increases in child support payments on the
probability of high school completion and college entry for children in four
hypothetical families with different income sources.
In the first section of this article, entitled "The Demise of the
African-American Male," the author discusses two issues: problems
experienced by African-American male children and the absence of
African-American fathers. The author asserts that African-American male
children act out or rebel with violent behavior when they realize that they
experience unfair negative treatment because of their skin color, and that
factors including a lack of education, the absence of appropriate role models,
and the decrease in economic opportunities exacerbate this behavior. The author
suggests that the fathers of African-American male children may be able to help
them to cope with problems particular to African-American males and keep them
from engaging in violent criminal activity. She then discusses several reasons
why these fathers are not present in their sons' lives, which include some
historic and economic factors, as well as the roles of government assistance
programs and racism. ??The second section, "Placement in the Best
Interests of the Delinquent African-American Male," discusses the criteria
most often used in the courts to determine children's custody arrangements,
called the "best interests test." Under this criteria, the courts
attempt to place children with the parent or guardian that can best promote
their well-being. In cases involving serious juvenile offenses, delinquents are
generally removed from their mothers' homes and become wards of the state. The
state then decides whether to place the delinquent in various custody
arrangements, such as with a friend or relative, a state industrial school, or a
private institution. The author suggests that placement with the delinquent's
father should be considered as an additional option. The third section, "The
African-American Father as Nurturer for his Delinquent Son," the author
suggests that African-American fathers (or possibly other African-American male
role models) can provide their sons with guidance that his mother cannot. In
the final section, "Forced Parentage is Not New," the author concludes
that, even though absent African-American fathers may not have been involved in
their sons' lives, they should be given the opportunity to parent. She suggests
that the state should not hesitate to place the delinquent with their father if
it has been determined it is in the child's best interest. She concludes with
examples of "forced parenting" in which the state sanctions parents
for not adequately supervising their children.
This article is a review of literature on fatherhood that identifies and
discusses "three central foci that have influenced the direction of
contemporary sociological scholarship on fatherhood issues." The first
focus is cultural images of fatherhood, that is, "the norms, values, and
beliefs surrounding the social status of father and its associated roles that
are shared by the general population or a sizable segment of it."
Regarding this focus, Marsiglio points out that the "breadwinner" role
has historically been associated with fathers, but that more varied images of
fathers have recently emerged, including a "good dad--bad dad"
dichotomy (i.e., "the involved, nurturing father versus the uninvolved,
'deadbeat' father who ignores his paternal obligations"). Also discussed
is how this image is affected by race and social class. The second focus
Marsiglio discusses is the social psychology of fatherhood. Included in this
discussion is identity theory, which "posits that fathers'
self-perceptions, which are subject to change over time, are organized in an
ordered fashion so that fathers will experience some of their statuses (e.g.,
worker, friend, son) and father roles (e.g., breadwinner, nurturer, companion)
as more important than others." The third focus addressed is paternal
conduct, which has been the subject of much research in as far as the
relationship between the type and level of fathers' involvement with their
children and their children's well-being. Marsiglio discusses how researchers
have taken several different approaches to studying this issue. The article
concludes by considering directions for future research and policy regarding
fatherhood, including some methodological issues (e.g., derivation of data from
mothers' versus fathers' reports), some substantive issues (e.g., the processes
by which fatherhood images are internalized by men, women, and children), and
some social policy issues (e.g., defining and increasing males' sense of
responsibility in financial and other areas).
Author provides an overview of changes in how the state has intervened in
child custody issues from colonial times to the present. In her afterward she
discusses three lessons that can be drawn from her review: "One lesson is
that the legal history of child custody is far more about the rights of mothers,
fathers, and masters than it is about the welfare of children....A second lesson
that can be gleaned...is that the law has maintained a two-tiered system in
dealing with poor children and relatively rich children in custody matters....A
third lesson that emerges ... is the changing rights of biological
parents....Perhaps because the law no longer attempts to uphold the sanctity of
marriage, and there are no longer clear-cut presumptions to determine custody,
the biological fact of parenthood is looked on with ever greater favor"
(pages 188-191). The book contains the following chapters: 1. Fathers/Masters:
Children/Servants: Child Custody in the Colonial Era; 2. From Fathers' Rights to
Mothers' Love: The Transformation of Child Custody Law in the First Century of
the New Republic, 1790-1890; 3. The State as Superparent: The Progressive Era,
1890-1920; 4. In the Best Interest of the Child? 1960-1990; 5. The Ascendancy of
the Social Sciences.
The hypotheses for this study were derived from family boundary theory which
refers to a system of rules regarding the participation of family members in
family life. Divorced families are faced with the difficult task of
establishing new boundaries and roles. The researchers' general hypothesis was
that factors that help the noncustodial father's sense of belonging and
meaningful role behavior would result in greater involvement with his children.
The specific hypotheses were as follows: 1) certain father characteristics
(e.g., education level) or attitudes indicative of motivation for parenting
should be related to fathers' level of involvement; 2) certain child
characteristics (e.g., younger, male, only child) should be related to higher
levels of father involvement; 3) fathers who have cooperative relationships with
their former spouses will interact with their children more frequently; 4)
certain structural characteristics (e.g., geographic distance from child, time
since divorce, remarriage status) will affect fathers' involvement because they
may make fathers more physically or emotionally distant from their children.
The data for this study come from the National Survey of Families and Households
which was conducted in 1987 and 1988. The researchers used responses from 86
divorced, nonremarried, noncustodial fathers of minor children who had complete
data. The dependent variable of fathers' involvement was measured using four
indices of involvement: frequency of visitation, length of visitation, time
spent in meaningful activities, and extent of talking on the telephone and/or
writing. A total involvement measure was computed by summing the scores on the
individual measures. The results indicate that fathers were more involved if
they reported being satisfied with being parents and if they perceived that they
had influence on their children's lives. None of the child characteristics
examined (i.e., child's age, gender, number of children) significantly affected
fathers' involvement. The frequency of fathers' contact with their spouses was
positively related to fathers' involvement level. The results also showed that
fathers who lived farther away had less involvement with their children.
The authors analyzed four large, nationally-representative surveys to study
the effects of single parent families on children's lives. The data sets used
were the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the National Longitudinal Survey
of Youth (NLSY), the High School and Beyond (HSB), and the National Survey of
Families and Households (NSFH). THE PSID, NLSY, and HSB are longitudinal data
sets, while the NSFH is cross-sectional. The measures of child well-being that
they use are high school grades and graduation, college attendance and
graduation, early childbearing and marriage, and early labor force attachment.
They recognize that these measures do not cover all aspects of well-being, but
believe they are good indicators of the likelihood that the children will be
economically independent (i.e., not in poverty) in adulthood. Based on the
results of their analyses of these data bases and their accumulated knowledge
from over ten years of research on the topic, the authors reach the following
conclusions: (1) "Children who grow up in a household with only one
biological parent are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a
household with both of their parents, regardless of the parents' race or
educational background, regardless of whether the parents are married when the
child is born, and regardless of whether the resident parent remarries" (p.
1). (2) "...that growing up with only one biological parent frequently
deprives children of important economic, parental, and community resources, and
that these deprivations ultimately undermine their chances of future success.
Low income -- and the sudden drop in income that often is associated with
divorce -- is the most important factor in children's lower achievement in
single-parent homes, accounting for about half of the disadvantage. Inadequate
parental guidance and attention and the lack of ties to community resources
account for most of the remaining disadvantage" (p. 3). They make policy
recommendations based on three underlying principles that they derived from
their research: The first principle is "something must be done immediately
to reduce the economic security of children growing up in single-parent
families....A second principle...is shared responsibility. We believe
the costs of raising children must be distributed more equally among men and
women and between parents and nonparents....Fairness demands that fathers and
society at large assume greater responsibility....The third, and perhaps most
important, principle...is that programs should be universal, that is,
they should be available to all children and all parents" (pages 154-155).
The book contains the following chapters: 1. Why We Care about Single
Parenthood; 2. How Father Absence Lowers Children's Well-Being; 3. Which
Outcomes are Most Affected; 4. What Hurts and What Helps; 5. The Value of
Money; 6. The Role of Parenting; 7. The Community Connection; 8. What Should
be Done.
This study addresses the question of "whether child support increases
parental conflict and, if so, whether the increase is large enough to outweigh
the benefits associated with greater economic security." The authors first
present a path model of child support affecting child well-being directly and
indirectly through parent-child contact and through parental conflict. The
model suggests that child support payments can increase parental conflict and
parent-child contact, each of which in turn affect child well-being. The data
used for the study are from the National Survey of Families and Households
(NSFH), conducted in 1987 and 1988. The data subset analyzed pertains to 844
children under age 18 with a living nonresidential father; respondents for these
children were their mothers. Indicators of child well-being consisted of two
measures: the child's grade point average (GPA) in school and a dichotomous
variable of school problems (coded 1 if the child dropped out of school, or the
parent was asked to meet with the child's teacher or principal because of
behavior problems, or the child had ever been suspended or expelled). The
parental conflict measure pertained specifically to conflict related to the
child; the father-child contact measure pertained to contact over the past 12
months. Child support includes that received according to legal agreements as
well as other financial contributions. The results indicate that the direct
effect of receiving more child support is to increase children's GPA and to
decrease school problems. The indirect effects of child support via parental
conflict and via parent-child contact were very small compared to the direct
effect of child support.
Because these results may be contaminated by unobserved characteristics of
fathers who pay support (e.g., greater commitment to their children), the study
also sought to examine whether a measure of predicted child support based solely
upon observed characteristics of the mother, characteristics of the child, and
the state of residence, acted similarly in its effect on child well-being. This
analysis was intended to give some suggestion of the effects of a universal
child support system on the average child. It was found that the direct effect
of predicted child support was not statistically significant, but suggested that
higher levels of predicted child support received was related to higher GPAs and
fewer school problems among children who were born in marriage. For children
who were born outside of marriage, the effect of child support was also
nonsignificant, but suggested that child support was associated with parental
conflict and more school problems. The authors concluded that these results
should be interpreted cautiously because the measure of predicted child support
was not well-specified.
This monograph uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
(NLSY) to examine the effects of single parenthood on the development of young
elementary school aged children. The author takes a more demographic than
psychological approach and focuses on longer term aspects of child adjustment to
their parents' separation. The first chapter of the monograph provides an
introduction and overview of issues, including a historical overview of trends
in marriage and divorce and associated implications for children, and outlines
the two primary objectives of the study: (1) "describe the marital family
transition processes from the perspective of the children in our sample and
specify what family factors appear to be associated with these transitions,"
and (2) "examine and analyze linkages between various paternal absence
configurations and subsequent child emotional and cognitive well-being."
Chapter 1 also provides a summary of the findings of previous research on the
effects of fathers' absences on children. Chapter 2 describes the sample used
in the study and how representative it is of all five to nine year olds in the
nation. Chapter 3 provides a "profile of father-figure contact," that
is, a descriptive account of the fathers who leave the home and the extent to
which new father figures take their place, as well as the patterns of visitation
by absent fathers. Chapter 4 uses tabular and multivariate analyses to describe
the traits associated with father-present and father-absent families and to
explore factors that are both linked with child well-being and the likelihood
that a father will leave the home. Also in chapter 4, longitudinal data are
used to examine how the absence of a father affects the family's socio-economic
well-being over time. In chapter 5, the extent to which variations in
children's behavior are related to their fathers' presence or absence is
explored. The relative emotional well-being of children experiencing various "paternal
configurations" is also tested. The analyses in chapter 6 are parallel to
those in chapter 5, except the focus is on children's cognitive well-being. In
chapter 7, the extent to which the quality of the home environment varies
between homes with fathers present and with fathers absent is explored and
whether home quality mediates the consequences of a father absence. Chapter 8
synthesizes the results and discusses their implications for children's
well-being.
This study examines the quality of father-child relationships after parental
divorce by using qualitative measures of the father-child relationship, rather
than variables indicating the provision of economic support or the amount and
type of father-child contact that are more often used in research. More
specifically, this study compares the perceptions of children who live with
their fathers to those who do not using several measures of relationship
quality: (1) the overall quality of the relationship with his/her father; (2)
the types of roles that their fathers fulfill (e.g., teacher, companion, role
model); and (3) the chance that he/she will rely on their father for support
during a stressful time. The sample of children used for this study were part
of the Understanding and Building Teenage Competency Project at Cornell
University; it included 395 seventh and eighth grade students from two schools
in central New York, one school in a rural community, and one school in a
medium-sized city. The results indicated that children who live apart from
their fathers more often consider other male figures as the "most important
male parent" in their lives than do children with coresidential parents.
However, children with nonresidential fathers considered their fathers more
functional in certain roles than did children residing with their fathers,
specifically, for the roles of "teacher," "supporter," and "challenger."
Residential status of fathers was also related to whether children relied on
their fathers for support, with more of those living with their fathers (56%)
than living apart (33%) reporting that they went to their father for help with
stressful events. In contrast, the residential status of fathers was not found
to be significantly associated with the measures of overall relationship
quality. In their discussion, the authors suggest that this study indicates
that nonresidential fathers can have good relationships with their children and
fulfill a variety of roles. They speculate that the relatively positive
perceptions of nonresidential fathers may be because fathers who remain involved
with their children may be particularly dedicated or because the relatively
limited contact with nonresidential fathers is more valuable and thus more
memorable.
Using the same data from divorced parents as in a previous study (Pearson
and Thoennes, 1988), the authors further examine patterns associated with
various types of sole and joint custody arrangements following divorce. This
study focuses on the characteristics of divorced parents with various types of
custody arrangements, some of parents' experiences with the various custody
types (e.g., level of parental conflict, satisfaction with the arrangement), and
certain behavioral and attitudinal outcomes (e.g., child adjustment). The
results showed that families with joint custody-joint residential arrangements
had parents with the highest education and household income levels at the time
of separation compared to families with other custody types. Mothers themselves
with joint custody-joint residential arrangements also earned more than mothers
with other arrangements. The authors suggest that these findings reflect the
higher financial cost of maintaining two residences for children and the more
flexible work schedules of high-earning parents. Most parents with joint
custody-joint residential arrangements (70 percent) also had only one child,
compared to about one-third to one-half of parents with other custody
arrangements. As far as the effect of custody type on parental cooperation
after divorce, the authors found that most parents opting for joint custody, and
particularly joint residential arrangements, were relatively friendly and
cooperative before and after divorce and thus concluded that postdivorce
relationships were a reflection of predivorce characteristics, not the type of
custody arrangement. The analysis yielded mixed results regarding the effect of
custody type on parent satisfaction and conflict. There were no differences by
custody type with respect to satisfaction with actual custody and visitation
practices; however joint custody parents had reported the lowest satisfaction
with the legal agreement one year after the child custody order. There was also
no clear relationship between custody type and conflict; parents with each
custody type reported some amount of disagreement regarding various aspects of
each custody type. Regarding the parent-child relationship, the study found
that nonresidential parents with joint custody were more involved with their
children than were noncustodial parents in sole custody cases. The parents in
sole custody arrangements also more often reported feeling overwhelmed with
parenting responsibilities than did those with joint custody arrangements;
parents with joint custody more often shared child-rearing tasks. The final
issue examined was the effect of custody type on child adjustment to divorce;
the authors found no effect of custody type on measures of children's
depression, aggression, delinquency, social withdrawal, and somatic complaints.
However, regular visitation did emerge as positively related to children's
adjustment. Similar to their 1988 study, the authors conclude that while the
joint custody arrangement worked well for the families in this study, they note
that the sample contained relatively wealthy and educated families who have had
cooperative relationships.
This study examines the relationship between various types of sole and joint
custody arrangements after divorce and whether child support is ordered, the
amount of child support ordered, and the amount of child support actually
received by mothers for their children. The data come from interviews done for
several research projects in Denver studying couples using mediation services,
including the Denver Custody Mediation Project and the Child Support and Child
Custody Project, and from court records. Families in the study were interviewed
at repeated intervals both before and after child support was awarded, yielding
information from 211 mothers with sole custody arrangements, 64 mothers with
joint legal custody and maternal residential arrangements, 63 mothers with joint
legal custody and joint residential arrangements, 54 fathers with sole custody
arrangements, and 26 fathers with joint legal custody and paternal residential
arrangements. The results indicated that in almost all cases of sole custody by
mothers (93 percent) fathers were ordered to pay child support. Fathers were
also required to pay support in 81 percent of the joint legal custody cases in
which mothers had the children residing with them. In joint legal-joint
residential custody cases, only 44 percent of fathers were ordered to pay
support. The authors found that many of the joint residential arrangements
without support orders involved families with fewer children, lower paternal
earnings and higher maternal earnings. The amount of child support awarded was
found to be unrelated to the type of child custody arrangement. There also were
no differences in other financial provisions such as cost-of-living increases or
children's educational expenses by custody type; these provisions were very rare
across all the types of custody arrangements. Among families with child support
orders, the type of custody arrangement was found to be related to voluntary
child support payment patterns, with mothers in joint custody arrangements
reporting to have received more. Specifically, mothers with sole custody
reported receiving 63 percent of what they were owed, compared to 81 percent of
payments received by those with joint legal-maternal residency and 95 percent by
those joint custody-joint residence arrangements. Some variables were found to
be stronger predictors of child support payment than custody type; these
included the absence of employment problems, the number of weekend visits, and
the level of cooperation between parents, each of which were positively related
to payment of support. The authors also found that visitation and paternal
involvement played a relatively large role in determining whether fathers made
contributions outside of regular support payments. The authors conclude that
because their sample of joint custody arrangements included relatively wealthy
families with fewer children and cooperative relationships at the time of
divorce, the findings cannot support increased imposition of joint custody
arrangements. However, they do suggest that the option of joint custody be
presented to divorcing couples more often, since child support was more regular
and complete with this arrangement.
The causes and effects of joint legal custody and of the relationship
between contact, child support, and child well-being can be better understood by
analyzing data gathered both before and after marital separation. In this way,
one can control for the effects of preseparation characteristics on the type of
legal custody arrangements obtained and on fathers' involvement after
separation. Using preliminary longitudinal data from the National Survey of
Families and Households, this study examines the characteristics associated with
divorce and with obtaining joint legal custody arrangements. It also provides a
preliminary look at the effects of joint legal custody on child support payments
and on the amount of time nonresident fathers spend with children, controlling
for the quality of the predivorce marital relationship. The first portion of
the analysis examines whether marital duration, three measures of marital
quality (i.e., conflict, happiness, aggression), parents' education, parents'
annual income, and the number and age of minor children are related to the
likelihood of separation. The results suggested that marital happiness is
negatively associated with separation and that marital aggression is positively
associated with separation, controlling for the other family characteristics.
The second part of the analyses looked at families who separated and had some
type of legal custody arrangement to predict who acquires joint legal custody
arrangements. None of the characteristics examined (i.e., mothers education,
number of minor children, race, duration of separation, marital aggression) were
found to be significantly associated with whether parents obtained a joint
custody agreement. In the third and final analysis stage, the effect of having
a joint custody arrangement on ??child support payments and on the amount of
time that nonresident parents spend with children is examined. The results
indicate that the nonresident parents spend more time with children after
marital separation in cases of joint custody arrangements than in other
arrangements, controlling for predivorce marital quality. As for the effect of
joint custody on child support payments, the results indicated that the effect
of joint custody interacted with the length of separation to affect child
support. For parents without joint legal custody, child support payments
decline as the length of separation increases. For those with joint legal
custody, child support payments remain stable over time. The author notes that
caution should be taken in interpreting these results because the preliminary
child support data suggest unexpectedly high dollar amounts of child support;
this is being investigated before release of the public use data. She
concludes, however, that the quality of parents' relationships appears to affect
the likelihood of separation, but does not affect whether parents will have
joint legal custody of their children after divorce or the amount of nonresident
parents' involvement after separation. The study results also suggest that
joint legal custody is associated with greater nonresident parent-child
involvement.
This study examines the effects of child support enforcement on nonresident
father-child contact and on conflict between parents. Child support enforcement
may increase father-child contact because fathers want to monitor how support
payments are spent or because making the payments may encourage fathers' to
think of themselves and consequently act like "good fathers." On the
other hand, contact may decrease with support payments because fathers may pay
support as a tradeoff for spending time with their children. As for parental
conflict, child support enforcement may increase contact and thus conflict among
parents who otherwise try to avoid each other, or because enforcement laws will
encourage mothers to become more aggressive in seeking payments. On the other
hand, mothers may become more satisfied with their payments, reducing conflict.
Data from the first and second waves of the National Survey of Families and
Households are used to examine these issues. The analysis focuses on families
in which the parents separated between waves 1 and 2 and the child was under age
18 at wave 2 and living with their mothers. Two measures of child support were
used, a dichotomous variable indicating whether or not any support was paid and
a continuous variable indicating the amount of support paid. Nonresident
fathers' contact with their children was measured by categorical variables
indicating how often the father saw the child in the past 12 months, whether or
not the child had visited overnight, and the number of overnight visits.
Conflict between parents was measured relative to six aspects of childrearing;
the variables used were a dichotomous one indicating any conflict as well as
variables counting of the number of childrearing aspects for which any conflict
and "a great deal" of conflict was reported.
The results indicate that paying child support is related to higher
frequencies of contact, even after controlling for parents' incomes, fathers'
attachment to children before separation, and the quality of parents' predivorce
relationship with each other. However, the amount of child support paid
does not affect the frequency of contact. This is preliminary evidence that
increasing the percentage of fathers who pay any child support will increase
father-child contact. To investigate whether enforcing child support payments
would affect father-child contact, the researchers examined the effect of a
predicted probability of paying support, reasoning that the predicted
probability of paying support should increase the amount of contact if, in fact,
child support and contact are causally related. The results indicate that the
predicted probability of support is not related to contact, suggesting that
child support enforcement will not increase contact between nonresident fathers
and children. As far as child support's effect on parental conflict, the
results indicated that payment of child support had no effect on whether parents
report having any conflict after separation. However, both making any child
support payments and higher amounts of payments were significantly associated
with a decreased likelihood of experiencing high levels of conflict.
This suggests that enforcing child support payment may expose children to some
additional parental conflict, but not to extreme levels of conflict.
This study uses longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and
Households (NSFH) to examine how parents' involvement with their children before
separation affects their custody, visiting, and child support behaviors after
separation. The NSFH consisted of a time 1 interview in 1987 or 1988 and a time
2 followup interview between 1992-1994. This study uses data from 1,882
families in which the child randomly selected for the original NSFH interview
was living with both biological parents at time 1, was under age 18 at time 2,
and whose parents' relationships were dissolved, but not by a death, at time 2.
Most of the analyses focuses on 281 families in which at least one parent was
interviewed in the time 2 survey. The analyses first examines whether parents'
involvement with children and their attitudes about parental responsibility at
time 1 affects whether the parents separated between time 1 and time 2. The
results indicated that mothers and fathers who believe that parenting would be
worse if they were separated are less likely to separate than other parents,
after controlling for several family, child, and marital relationship
characteristics. In contrast, there was no significant relationship between the
frequency of children's activities with mothers or fathers and whether or not
parents separated. The analyses also examined the factors influencing whether
the child lived with the mother after her marital separation. The results
suggested that there is little association between parent involvement with
children before divorce and where children live after divorce; however, children
who have good predivorce relationships with their mothers before divorce are
more likely to live with them after divorce. The same effect was observed for
fathers but was not statistically significant. The last stage of analyses in
this study examined the effects of parents' attitudes and behavior before
separation on visiting and child support by nonresident fathers after
separation. The results indicate that when mothers spend more time with their
children in activities before divorce, the fathers are less likely to visit
their children weekly after divorce. No other independent variable, including
fathers' involvement before divorce, emerged as a significant predictor of
nonresident father visitation. Several independent variables examined were
associated with the amount of child support nonresident fathers pay after
divorce. The results indicate that fathers pay more child support if they
believed before the divorce that parenting would be more difficult after divorce
and if they reported that they sometimes desired to be free of the
responsibilities of parenthood. The authors conclude that their study provides
preliminary evidence that there is some consistency in the extent of parents'
involvement with their children before and after divorce with respect to living
arrangements after separation. However, after living arrangements have been
determined, fathers' predivorce involvement has no effect on his visiting or
child support behavior after the divorce.
Using prospective data, this study examines whether the difficulties
children experience after parents divorce are also found to be present before
divorce, and what factors may be responsible for children's predivorce
adjustment problems. The authors hypothesize that, prior to divorce, "children
from to-be-divorced families would show more behavior problems than children
from always-married families" and that "differences in child
adjustment prior to and following parental separation would be related to
parenting problems that began prior to parental dissolution, particularly
conflict between the parents." The data for this study come from the New
York Longitudinal Study which collected data from a convenience sample of 132
children from 84 families. The parents of the sampled children were relatively
well-educated (40% of mothers and 60% of fathers had postgraduate college
degrees), predominantly Jewish (78%), and all white. Families were selected for
the study in 1956 when the subject children were infants and followup data were
collected until the children were 22 years old. Assessments of child behavior
were made at age 3, 5, 16-17, and 18-22. Data on child care practices and
attitudes were collected from parents when their children were age 3. Of the
132 children, 35 experienced their parents' divorce. The results suggested that
the predivorce behavior of children from to-be-divorced families did not
significantly differ from those in always-married families. However, boys from
divorced families displayed poorer post-divorce adolescent and young adult
adaptation than boys from intact families. No such difference was found for
girls. The results also indicated that to-be-divorced parents had more marital
conflict than always-married parents. Early parental conflict was also found to
be negatively related to children's later adjustment as adolescents and young
adults, more so for boys than girls. The authors suggest in their conclusion
that future research on children from divorced families include examinations of
the predivorce family environment in addition to child adjustment.
The authors used national survey data as well as data from in-depth
interviews with 45 divorced fathers to examine whether divorce increases
parental role strain for fathers and whether parental role strain helps to
explain the high rates of psychological distress often observed in divorced men.
The survey data was from Americans' Changing Lives: Wave I. It
consisted of a probability sample of persons living in households in the
continental U.S. A total of 3,617 respondents, aged 24 and older were
interviewed face-to-face. For the analyses reported in this paper, a subsample
of 155 divorced men and 812 married men with children were studied. The
in-depth interviews were conducted with 45 divorced fathers living in Austin,
Texas. Using ordinary least squares regression, the authors ran two sets of
models. In the first set, psychological distress symptoms and alcohol
consumption were regressed on a set of background variables including marital
status, length of time divorced, whether or not the men had minor children,
race, education, income, and age. In the second set, parental role strain was
added to determine if it contributed to the model. As in previous studies, the
authors found that divorced men exhibited higher levels of psychological
distress and alcohol consumption than married men. Adding parental role strain
to the model significantly added to the models. "The estimated effect of
divorce on psychological distress is reduced by 48% and is no longer
statistically significant once parental role strain is taken into account. The
estimated effect of divorce on alcohol consumption is reduced by 26%. These
results suggest that some of the estimated effect of divorce on psychological
distress and alcohol consumption among men may be mediated by strains associated
with being a divorced parent" (page 386). The in-depth interviews revealed
several sources of strain: visitation and child support arrangements,
relationship with former spouse, and difficulties with new personal and social
identities as divorced fathers. Common stresses were the pain of having to
return children after short visits, disruptions in daily routines, loss of
control over their children, lack of control over how child support payments are
spent, difficulties with their ex-spouses some of who created barriers to
visiting the children, and difficulties adapting to the new role of being a
divorced father. The authors note that a weakness of their study is its
reliance on cross-sectional data.
The author used longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of
Youth to explore the relationship between payment of child support and
visitation. He created a file consisting of custodial mothers and non-custodial
fathers. He then used a set of simultaneous equations to examine whether
changes in child support led to changes in visitation or vice versa, after
accounting for the unobserved heterogeneity of the respondents. He found that
there was no causal association between payment of child support and visitation.
Rather, he concludes that the positive association between visitation and child
support that has been observed in cross-sectional studies is due to unmeasured
characteristics of the parents. He notes that policies that produce changes in
one behavior could affect the other indirectly though such factors as level of
parental commitment or the relationship between the parents. He recommends more
studies to examine the effects of these unobserved variables that can change
over time on child support and visitation. He also notes that his sample
consisted of relatively young mothers and fathers with young children followed
over a relatively short period of time. His analyses should be repeated on
samples that include older parents and children and that follow the families
longer to see if the same results are obtained.
The authors begin by outlining a basic economic model of marriage in which
the resources of the family are divided among three uses: the consumption of the
husband, the consumption of the wife, and the expenditure on children. The
consumption level of husbands and wives are private goods; child expenditures
are treated as public, or collective, goods. The allocation of family resources
between the public and private uses when the husband and wife are married will
be different than when they are divorced. In marriage, the husband and wife
agree on an allocation of resources between their own consumption and child
expenditures. In the divorced state, the family's allocation between private
consumption and child expenditure is less efficient because the custodian has
control over child expenditures and does not internalize the effect of their
allocation on the non-custodian; the non-custodian cannot monitor the extent of
the allocation to children. The authors' also suggest their model explains why
wives usually obtain child custody and receive positive transfers (alimony,
child support, and property settlements). According to their model, child
custody goes to the parent most willing to spend a large share of resources on
children. Assuming this is more true for wives and the husband is committed to
transferring his income to the wife, it is to his advantage to also relinquish
child custody because the wife will choose to a high level of child
expenditures. If the husband were to transfer income to the wife and assume
child custody, he could afford only a level of child expenditures that is lower
than desirable, i.e., lower than that spent in the marriage state. The authors
also discuss the implications of noncompliance with the divorce settlement to
their model. According to the model, whether or not fathers will voluntarily
make alimony and child support payments and the amount of payment depends on
their preferences for child expenditure and his relative income. For instance,
the father has a high income and the mother has a low income, the father will
have an incentive to voluntarily transfer resources to the wife in order to
maintain his desired level of child expenditure. However, his desired level of
child expenditures decreases with the loss of proximity to the child. The cost
of maintaining contact between the noncustodial parent and the child is costly
for both parents and thus tends to reduce contacts. Consequently, less child
support is paid by the noncustodian who has less incentive to maintain the
quality of the children voluntarily.
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Contemporary Social, Develomental, and Clinical Perspectives. New York:
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Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lamb, M. 1986. The Father's Role: Applied Perspectives. New York:
John Wiley & Sons.
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- Young, Unwed, or Poor Fathers
Achatz, Mary and Crystal A. MacAllum. 1994. Young Unwed Fathers: Report
from the Field. Philadelphia, PA: Public/Private Ventures.
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Hood Foundation.
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- Theories
- Marital Disruption
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1141-1187.
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- Families and Society
Becker, Gary S. 1981. A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA:
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Hirschi, Travis. 1991. "Family Structure and Crime" in B.
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Gottfredson, editors. 1994. The Generality of Deviance. New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Books. Apparently they argue that ineffective parenting is at
the root of deviance. This anthology is a sequel to their earlier book, A
General Theory of Crime.)
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- Determinants of Marital Disruption
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231-236.
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The Mythical Connection." Family Relations 40(2): 139-147.
Responses to article on pages 148-155. Issue contains other relevant articles.
- Other Related Research
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Characteristics of Single Parent Families.: Marriage and Family Review
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20(1/2): 71-97.
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Mother Family: A Macroeconomic Perspective." Marriage and Family Review
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Overview." Family Law Quarterly 22( ): 367-528.
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June 1995.
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