Multipartner Fertility in a Disadvantaged Population: Results and Policy Implications of an Empirical Investigation of Paternity Actions in St. Joseph County, Indiana

• Author: Margaret F. Brinig & Marsha Garrison
• Position: Fritz Duda Family Chair in Law, University of Notre Dame Law School. - Suzanne J. and Norman Miles Professor or Law, Brooklyn Law School.
• Pages: 27-56

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* Fritz Duda Family Chair in Law, University of Notre Dame Law School.

** Suzanne J. and Norman Miles Professor or Law, Brooklyn Law School.

Multipartner Fertility in a

Disadvantaged Population: Results and

Policy Implications of an Empirical

Investigation of Paternity Actions in

St. Joseph County, Indiana

MARGARET F. BRINIG* & MARSHA GARRISON**

Introduction

In this paper, we report data on multipartner fertility (MPF) in a

population of children and parents for whom paternity actions were

brought in 2008 or 2010 in St. Joseph County, Indiana. The computerized,

court-based record system we utilized enabled us to collect information

on parental characteristics and child outcomes that other MPF researchers

have been unable to access. Our research thus offers a unique, data-rich

window into an important—and growing—aspect of contemporary family

life. It also points the way to needed shifts in family policy and law.

I. Multipartner Fertility in Context

Multipartner fertility, in plain English, refers to a parent who has

produced at least two children with at least two different partners. MPF

has long been with us. Until the twentieth century, MPF was typically

associated with the death of a spouse. Becoming a youthful widow or

widower was commonplace; in one Virginia county, 69% of children

born in the seventeenth century and more than 50% born in the eighteenth

Published in Family Law Quarterly, Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 2018. © 2019 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof

may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

28 Family Law Quarterly, Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 2018

century lost at least one parent before age eighteen.1 Remarriage often

occurred quickly, particularly when the widow or widower had young

children.2 For younger couples, MPF generally followed in short order.

As rising life expectancies reduced the probability of youthful widow-

or widowerhood, the locus of MPF shifted to divorce. We do not know the

low point for MPF, but there is no question that MPF rates began to take off

during the 1960s with the rapid increase in divorce, which is concentrated

among young couples. By 1980, about 20% of children living with their

mothers had a half sibling from a parent’s remarriage.3

The rapid rise in nonmarital cohabitation and birth has caused a further

acceleration of MPF as nonmarital relationships are, everywhere, less

stable than marriage.4 By 2004, 11.7% of U.S. children were living with

at least one half-sibling,5 and 30% of U.S. adults polled reported having a

step or half-sibling.6

Epidemiological factors have perennially been important predictors

of MPF. In the era when MPF resulted primarily from early widow- or

widowerhood, life expectancy was markedly lower among the poorer

classes.7 Today, too, MPF is unevenly distributed, and epidemiological

factors continue to play a large role in explaining variation in MPF levels.

One important variable is maternal education. As recently as the 1970s,

MPF was only slightly higher (or, in some nations, about the same) among

1. See darrett B. rUtman & anita h. rUtman, a plaCe in time: middlesex CoUnty,

virGinia 1650–1750, at 114 (1984). In wealthy England and Wales, life expectancy was thirty-

seven years in 1700, forty-one in 1820, and forty-one in 1870. See David Cutler et al., The

Determinants of Mortality, 20 J. eCon. perspeCtives 97, 99–100 (2006).

2. See Satomi Kurosu et al., Remarriage, Gender, and Rural Households: A Comparative

Analysis of Widows and Widowers in Europe and Asia (presented at Annual Meeting of

Population Ass’n of Am., New Orleans, LA, Apr. 17–19, 2008), http://paa2008.princeton.edu/

papers/80758.

3. See Larry L. Bumpass, Demographic Aspects of Children’s Second-Family Experience,

90 am. J. soC. 608 (1984).

4. See Jaap Dronkers, Cohabitation, Marriage & Union Instability in Europe g.2, inst.

Fam. stUdies (Apr. 7, 2016), https://ifstudies.org/blog/cohabitation-marriage-and-union-

instability-in-europe; Paula Fomby & Cynthia Osborne, Family Instability, Multipartner

Fertility, and Behavior in Middle Childhood, 79 J. marriaGe & Fam. 75 tbl.1 (2016) (in U.S.

Fragile Families study, 14.5% of nonmarital children and 64.3% of marital children experienced

stable single-partner fertility at age 9).

5. See Rose M. Kreider & Jason M. Fields, Children’s Coresidence with Half Siblings

5–6, tbl.1 (presented at Annual Meeting of Population Ass’n of Am., Dallas, TX, Apr. 15–17,

2010), https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2010/demo/2010_

Kreider_Fields.pdf (10.6% did so in 1991).

6. See Pew Research Center, A Portrait of Stepfamilies, pew researCh Ctr. (2011), http://

www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/01/13/a-portrait-of-stepfamilies/.

7. See, e.g., Jona Schellekens, Morality and Socio-Economic Status in Two Eighteenth-

Century Dutch Villages, 43 pop. stUd. 391 (1989).

Published in Family Law Quarterly, Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 2018. © 2019 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof

may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.