A Better Deal for Cohabiting Fathers? Union Status Differences in Father Involvement

We use the package deal framework to study the trajectory of father involvement over time as a function of union status, while also examining reporting differences in father involvement by parent gender. Data on 4,224 mother-father pairs are from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. Average father involvement at the child’s first birthday is 3.25 days per week and declines at a rate of .17 days per year. Mothers, on average, report father involvement to be .57 days less than fathers report. Parents who remain in a continuous coresidential union, who transition from cohabitation to marriage, or who transition from a noncoresidential state to a coresidential union experience the highest levels of father involvement and the lowest levels of discrepancy between mothers’ and fathers’ reports. Cohabiting fathers exhibit higher average levels of father involvement than married fathers. We discuss the place of cohabiting families in light of our findings.