Changes in Nonresident Father‐Child Contact From 1976 to 2002

• Published date: 01 February 2009
• Author: Catherine E. Meyers,Paul R. Amato,Robert E. Emery
• Date: 01 February 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2008.00533.x

PAUL R. AMATO AND CATHERINE E. MEYERS Pennsylvania State University

ROBERT E. EMERY University of Virginia*

Changes in Nonresident Father-Child Contact From

1976 to 2002

To study changes in nonresident father contact

since the 1970s, we pooled data from 4 national

surveys: the National Survey of Children

(1976), the National Survey of Families and

Households (1987 – 1988), the National Longi-

tudinal Survey of Youth (1996), and the

National Survey of America’s Families (2002).

On the basis of mothers’ reports, levels of con-

tact rose signif‌icantly across surveys. Paying

child support and having a nonmarital birth

were strongly related to contact frequency. The

increase in contact may be benef‌icial in general

but problematic if it occurs within the context of

hostile interparental relationships. Because

nonresident fathers are having more contact

with their children now than in the past, an

increasing need exists for practitioners to help

parents f‌ind ways to separate their former

romantic roles from their ongoing parental

roles and to develop at least minimally cooper-

ative coparental relationships.

Researchers, policymakers, and the public all

have an interest in, and often hold differingopin-

ions about, the extent of fathers’ involvement in

childrearing. This issue has been of particular

importance sincethe 1960s and 1970s, when fem-

inist ideals challenged the ‘‘traditional’’ family

roles of mother as caretaker and father as bread-

winner (Griswold, 1993). Evidenceindicates that

married fathers have increased their level of

involvement with children during recent deca-

des. The proportion of time married fathers spent

in direct child care relative to mothers increased

from 0.24 to 0.55 between 1965 and 1998, ac-

cording to research from nationally representa-

tive samples (Casper & Bianchi, 2002).

Our purpose was to explore whether nonresi-

dent fathers also increased their involvement

with children in recent decades. We know that

the number of children who lived primarily with

their fathers increased by about 50% between

1960 and 1990 (Meyer & Garasky, 1993). Yet

(excluding cases of joint physical custody),

divorced, separated, or never-married mothers

remain far more likely than fathers to be child-

ren’s primary residential parent: 83% versus

17% in the United States in 2004 (Grall, 2006).

What we do not know is whether nonresidential

fathers’ contact with children has increased in

recent years, and if so, what factors are related

to this increase. The goal of the current study

was to f‌ill this gap in the literature.

WHY STUDYING CONTACT ISIMPORTANT

With respect to children’s well-being, most re-

searchers recognize that the quality of the rela-

tionship between nonresident fathers and their

Department of Sociology at the Pennsylvania State Univer-

sity, University Park, PA 16802 (pxa6@psu.edu).

*Center for Children, Families, and the Law at the Univer-

sity of Virginia, 102 Gilmer Hall, Charlottesville, VA

22904-4400.

Key Words: child support, father contact, fatherhood, father

involvement, nonresidential fathers.

Family Relations 58 (February 2009): 41–53 41

A Publication of

the National Council on

Family Relations