News Category: economic security

After seven years in conversation with nearly 400 low-income men, authors of a new study in the Journal of Marriage and Family are lending fresh insight into the ways that low-income fathers support their children in other households. Drawing on repeated semi-structured interviews, Kane, Nelson, and Edin find that poor noncustodial fathers provide surprising amounts of support in the form of diapers, clothes, food, and childcare.

In addition to providing emotional support to their children, fathers play a crucial role in their children’s development through the provision of financial support. Children with supportive fathers do better across a wide range of cognitive and behavioral domains—from greater academic achievement and improved health to lower rates of delinquency and depression. For some children, the financial support of their fathers can even mean the difference between living above or below the poverty line.

The percentage of nonmarital births in the United States doubled between 1980 and 2011. Currently, in Texas, 42 percent of recent births are to unmarried mothers. This dramatic rise in the number of nonmarital births is of growing concern because of the precarious economic status of single parents (most often mothers) and children. Moreover, there is a host of negative social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes associated with children who live in poor single-parent families, especially when those families lack involved and supportive fathers.

Two married parents living in one household with their children once comprised the normative family in the United States. Today, approximately 41 percent of children are born to unmarried parents and nearly one-third of children live apart from at least one of their biological parents.¹ These changes in family structure are cause for concern because unmarried fathers have no automatic legal ties to their children, and children living apart from at least one parent are considerably more likely to live in poverty and spend less time with the noncustodial parent.²