Using nationally representative data from married families, research has consistently demonstrated that both generic religious values and conservative Protestantism are positively associated with paternal involvement. Unfortunately, little research has focused on the association between...

This study explores how mental illness shapes transitions to marriage among unwed mothers using augmented data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. We estimate proportional hazard models to assess the effects of mental illness on the likelihood of marriage over a five year period...

Using a representative sample of children born to unwed parents drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study investigates whether marriage after childbirth has a causal effect on early child cognitive ability, using a treatment outcome approach to account for the...

A growing body of research has found support for the idea that children’s behavioral development and school performance may be influenced as much by multiple changes in family composition during childhood as by the quality and character of the families in which children reside at any given...

We investigate the influence of changes in demography, the strength of the economy, and social policies on teen birth rates in the U.S. from 1981 to 1999, a period of wildly fluctuating rates. We find that demographic and social policy changes largely counteracted one another during this period...

At the nexus of changing marital and fertility behavior is a new reality of contemporary family life—the fact that a significant fraction of adults today (will) have biological children by more than one partner, sometimes called ‘multi-partnered fertility.’ In this paper, we use data from...

This paper examines the consequences of incarceration for non-resident White, Latino, and African American fathers’ contact with children and their formal and informal child support agreements three years after the child’s birth. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing...

Recent scholarship has begun to investigate the consequences of instability in the family over a period of time, as compared to examining family status at a particular point in time (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007; Wu & Martinson, 1993; Wu & Thomson, 2001). This body of research has...

Researchers and policy makers have long been concerned that government policies may influence individual behavior in unintended ways. In particular, they worry that by providing mothers with an income that is independent of marriage, welfare and child support policies may discourage marriage and...

This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine differences in the parenting behaviors of resident biological and social fathers on measures of engagement, shared responsibility, and cooperation in parenting. Regression, difference-in-difference, and...