Fathers' Investments of Money and Time Across Residential Contexts

• Author: Kimberly J. Turner,Alicia G. VanOrman,Marcia J. Carlson
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12324
• Date: 01 February 2017

M J. C University of Wisconsin—Madison

A G. VO Population Reference Bureau∗

K J. T Child Trends∗∗

Fathers’ Investments of Money and Time Across

Residential Contexts

Fathers’ roles in family life have changed dra-

matically over the past 50 years. In addition to

ongoing breadwinning responsibilities, many

fathers are now involved in direct caregiving

and engagement with children. Yet there is

considerable variation in what fathers do, espe-

cially depending on whether they live with

or away from their child. In this article, the

authors use data from the Fragile Families and

Child Wellbeing Study (N =3,869) to describe

how fathers’ economic capacities (money) and

direct involvement with children (time) are

associated over child ages 1 to 9 for resident

versus nonresident fathers, net of confounding

factors. They found suggestive evidence that

money and time investments operate differently

across residential contexts: Resident fathers

experience a trade-off between market work

and time involved with children. In contrast,

nonresident fathers’ higher economic capacities

Department of Sociology, Center for Demography and

Ecology, and Institute for Research on Poverty,University

of Wisconsin—Madison, 1180 Observatory Dr.,Madison,

WI 53706 (carlson@ssc.wisc.edu).

∗Population Reference Bureau, 1875 Connecticut Ave.,

NW, Washington, DC 20009.

∗∗Child Trends, 7315 Wisconsin Ave.,Bethesda, MD

20814.

Key Words: fathers, Fragile Families and Child Wellbe-

ing (FFCW), nonresidential parents, parenting, paternal

employment.

are associated with more time involvement,

underscoring the greater challenge for such

fathers to remain actively involved.

Over the past half-century, major demographic

changes have fundamentally altered fathers’

roles in family life. In particular, union dis-

solution has increased, owing to high divorce

rates and the growing proportion of births that

occur outside of marriage (which are less often

followed by long-term union stability than are

marital births). Because children are more likely

to live with their mother when their parents’

union ends (Amato, 2000), fathers today are

more likely to be living away from their bio-

logical children than are mothers—and than

their mid-20th-century counterparts. Overall, a

striking aggregate decline in the proportion of

U.S. men living with their own biological chil-

dren has been observed between the mid-1960s

and the mid-1990s (Eggebeen, 2002) and likely

beyond. From the perspective of children,

according to recent census data, 27% of all

children under age 18 were living away from

their biological father in 2014 (U.S. Census

Bureau, 2014).

In addition to changing demographic pat-

terns, fathers’ involvementin family life has also

changed substantially over the past half-century,

reecting shifts in family gender roles and the

division of household labor and market work.

Although providing economic support remains

10 Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (February 2017): 10–23

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12324