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Journal Article This article provides the first individual-level estimates of the change over time in the probability of nonresidence for initially resident fathers in the United States. Drawing on the 1968-1997 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we used discrete-time event history models to compute the probabilities of nonresidence for six 5-year periods. Our sample consists of men (N = 1,388) who are coresident with their biological children at the time of birth. We found that the observed probability of nonresidence doubled over the three decades of the study period, but not linearly. The risk…
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Journal Article Using data from the June 1980 Current Population Survey, Morgan, Lye, and Condran (1988) reported that families with a daughter have a higher divorce risk than families with a son. They attribute this finding to the higher involvement of fathers in raising a son, which in turn promotes marital stability. We investigate the relation between gender composition of children and parents' divorce risk with cross-national data from the Fertility and Family Survey. These data, which cover 16 European countries, Canada, and the United States, do not support a general hypothesis that sons contribute…
Parents Are Forever leads parents gently, in step-by-step fashion, toward becoming successful coparents after divorce. Based on the grief recovery model, this book tells moms and dads exactly what they need to do to help the children they love cope with changes in their lives. Parents are shown how to have business meetings, how to create a parenting plan, and how to keep their childrens' needs as their first priority while they transition to a new kind of family. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article Involving caregivers in their children's services often is assumed to make the delivery of child-focused services more effective. We examined the relation of caregiver involvement in children's early intervention programs (EIPs) with caregiver-child interaction. Participants were 99 low-income single caregivers whose children ( 40 months old) were enrolled in EIPs that provided opportunities for caregiver involvement. The results confirmed that caregivers who were more engaged with the programs (as rated by program staff) were more likely to demonstrate more responsiveness in interactions…
In considering unmarried parents, there are also two things we do not know: whether interventions to improve relationship dynamics might be successfully designed and implemented, and what effects they would have on unmarried couples and their children. This paper describes three studies sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (DHHS, ACF), designed to answer these questions. The first study developed a conceptual framework that identified the factors to be considered in the design, implementation, and evaluation of programs for…
About one-third of all births each year in the United States are to unmarried parents. With the increased focus on promoting healthy marriage in the pending federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families re-authorization, interest is growing in developing approaches to effectively reach this population in the area of relationship education. This paper presents key findings from the literature on the Fragile Family Research Project, and the barriers and risks that fragile families face in forming families and involving fathers, including couple violence and domestic violence. The process of…
