Cooperation, Conflict, or Disengagement? Coparenting Styles and Father Involvement in Fragile Families

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the association between coparenting quality and nonresident fathers' involvement with children over the first five years after a nonmarital birth. We find that about one year after a nonmarital birth, 48% of fathers are living away from their child, rising to 56% and then to 63% at three and five years, respectively Using structural equation models to estimate cross-lagged effects, we find that positive coparenting is a strong predictor of nonresident fathers' future involvement, whereas fathers' involvement is only a weak (but significant) predictor of future coparenting quality. The positive effect of coparenting quality on fathers' involvement is robust across several techniques designed to address unobserved heterogeneity and across different strategies for handling missing data. We conclude that parents' ability to work together in rearing their common child across households helps keep nonresident fathers connected to their children and that programs aimed at improving parents' ability to communicate may have benefits for children irrespective of whether the parents' romantic relationship remains intact.

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a "package deal" in which a father's relationship with his child is contingent on his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partner 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 mother's relationship or parenting transition are largest when children are young. We discuss the implications of our results for the well-being of nonmarital children and the quality of nonmarital relationships faced with high levels of relationship instability and multiple-partner fertility.