FATHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF PATERNAL ROLES: VARIATIONS BY MARITAL STATUS AND LIVING ARRANGEMENT Center for Research on Child Wellbeing

Relying on new data from fathers in the Fragile Families and Child WellBeing survey (n=2,903), I examine fathers’ reports of the “most important” perceived paternal role among six different domains: providing economic support, direct care, love and affection, protection, discipline, and teaching the child about life. Approximately half of all fathers identified providing love and affection as the most important thing that fathers do. A substantial minority said that teaching the child about life was the key activity; whereas a relatively small proportion said that economic support and direct care were fathers’ major responsibilities. Controlling for an extensive set of fathers’ background characteristics and attitudes and measures of the mother-father relationship, married and cohabiting fathers differ from each other in their perceived importance of financial support; cohabiting fathers are significantly more likely than married fathers to identify this dimension of parenting as the most important one. Fathers’ perceptions of parental responsibilities: Variations by marital status and living arrangement The involvement of fathers with their children-in financial, emotional, and instrumental realms-is a topic of growing concern among policy makers and the public. As the link between father absence and poverty has become clearer, this concern has been targeted particularly at unmarried, nonresident fathers and low-income families. Welfare reform made this concern explicit, including in the primary provisions demands that mothers in the welfare system comply with paternity establishment and child support enforcement efforts, and that states increase efforts to encourage marriage among low-income parents. The current federal administration is proposing to spend $100 million annually to promote and encourage marriage more aggressively among low-income people, which will include, for example, education campaigns on the importance of marriage (Ooms, 2002). These policy levers are intended to increase the financial and possibly emotional connection of poor fathers and their children, thus helping to diminish child poverty, problematic child outcomes, and the state’s role in supporting poor children. Notably, the President’s determination to make “committed, responsible fatherhood” a national priority is linked to the current administration’s emphasis on marriage as “an essential institution” for the well-being of children. This political philosophy, however, fails to account for the large and growing number of children who are born into and growing up with two biological, unmarried parents in a cohabiting union. Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent living arrangement in the United States. Some authors have suggested that this demographic shift illustrates the declining significance of marriage as a union status and as a setting for childrearing (Bumpass & Lu, 2000). This trend is worrisome for those who believe that marriage confers economic and psychological benefits on adults and children, whereas cohabitation does not (Waite & Gallagher, 2000). Although research on parenting, family processes, and child development in cohabiting unions has begun to develop, much remains unknown. In large part, this is due to data limitations – many nationally representative data sets that provide information on parenting and child well-being do not allow for the identification of cohabiting biological fathers in large enough numbers to be analytically useful (Hofferth & Anderson, 2003). Moreover, to the extent that information about cohabiting fathers is available, it focuses mostly on fathers’ demographic characteristics. Missing in this literature is an assessment of the parental attitudes and behaviors of unmarried fathers themselves, in part because, until recently, such data were not available. The present paper draws on new and unique data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey. These data contain extensive information on the fathers of newborn children, gathered from fathers themselves, on topics including demographic and human capital characteristics, values and attitudes, and relationships with mothers. The main question posed in this paper is whether cohabiting biological fathers of newborn children differ from their married counterparts in their assessment of their roles and responsibilities as fathers. This question is motivated by the observation in a small number of studies that children in two biological parent cohabiting unions have less optimal developmental environments and outcomes than their counterparts in married-parent households, even controlling for the demographic and economic differences that distinguish these two groups (DeLeire & Kalil, 2002; 2003; Dunifon & Kowaleski-Jones, 2002; Nelson, Clark, & Acs, 2001; Osborne, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2003; Thomson, Hanson, & McLanahan, 1994). Some have also reported differences in the parental behavior of biological cohabiting and married parents (Carlson & McLanahan, 2001; Hofferth & Anderson, 2003). An examination of fathers’ perceptions of their responsibilities to their newborn children, and whether these differ in the two groups of fathers, may provide insights into the differences in parental behavior and child development that have been observed among fathers of older children. A noteworthy feature of the Fragile Families data is that it allows for a comparison not only of cohabiting biological fathers with their married counterparts, but a comparison of nonresident biological fathers with biological cohabiting fathers. Understanding the extent to which biological fathers’ perceptions of parental roles and responsibilities differ in cohabiting versus marital arrangements can provide insights into the question of whether it is the marital relationship that distinguishes fathers, or whether living arrangements is the key distinguishing characteristic. In other words, are cohabiting biological fathers more like married fathers or more like non-resident biological fathers in their perceived parental responsibilities? The Fragile Families data are especially well-suited to address this question, as previous studies on this topic have suffered from an inability to distinguish non-biological cohabitors (i.e., cohabiting stepfathers) from their biological counterparts (Manning, 2002). Background The percentage of children born to unmarried mothers has increased dramatically in the past 20 years. Among children born to US women under 40 in 1999, 33% were to unmarried mothers, up from 21% for the cohort of children born in 1980-84 (Ventura & Bachrach, 2000). However, the growth of children born to unmarried mothers is almost completely associated with cohabiting two-parent families. Indeed, about 39% of the children born to unmarried mothers in 1990-94 were born to cohabiting parents, up from 29% in 1980-84 (Bumpass & Lu 2000). Children’s increasing likelihood of living in a cohabiting family is also a result of their mother’s entry into a cohabiting union. Current estimates suggest that about 40 percent of all children will spend some time in a cohabiting family before age 16 (Bumpass & Lu 2000). Increasing rates of cohabitation raise important questions about the definition of “family” and about cohabitation as a context for childrearing. In particular, how much do cohabiting families behave like married families? A small literature has begun to address this issue by examining whether the adults and children in cohabiting families have similar economic, emotional, and psychological circumstances as adults and children in married families (Brown, 2000; Manning & Smock, 1995; Thomson, Hanson, & McLanahan, 1994; Waite & Gallager