Unwed Fathers and Fragile Families

Sara McLanahan, Irwin Garfinkel, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Hongxin Zhao and Waldo Johnson
Additional contact information
Sara McLanahan: Princeton University
Irwin Garfinkel: Columbia University
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn: Columbia University
Hongxin Zhao: Columbia University
Waldo Johnson: University of Chicago

No 991, Working Papers from Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.

Abstract: Nearly a third of all births in the United States today occur to parents who are not legally married. The proportions are even higher among poor and minority populations, 40% among Hispanics, and 70% among blacks (Ventura et al. 1995). Out-of-wedlock childbearing is occurring with increasing frequency in nearly all western industrialized countries. Indeed, the proportion of children born outside marriage is even higher in the Scandinavian countries than it is in the U.S. (McLanahan and Casper 1996). However, the U.S. is somewhat unique with respect to the involvement of unwed fathers in the lives of their children. Whereas in the western European countries, the vast majority of unmarried parents are living together when their child is born, in the U.S. only about 25% of unwed parents are cohabiting (Bumpass and Sweet 1989). At first glance, these figures would seem to suggest that American men who father children outside marriage are less attached to their children than European men. This impression is further reinforced by research which shows that a substantial proportion of never married fathers have virtually no contact with their children (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).

Date: 1998-03
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/sites/fragil ... -12-ff-mclanahan.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:crcwel:wp98-12-ff-mclanahan.pdf

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bobray Bordelon ().