Laura Tach

Parenting as a "Package Deal": Relationships, Fertility, and Nonresident Father Involvement Among Unmarried Parents

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a “package deal” in which a father’s relationship with his child is contingent on his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partner fertility among unmarried parents using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a recent longitudinal survey ofnonmarital births in large cities. We examine whether unmarried mothers’ and fathers’ subsequent relationship and parenting transitions are associated with declines in fathers ’ contact with their nonresident biological children. We find that father involvement drops sharply after relationships between unmarried parents end. Mothers’ transitions into new romantic partnerships and new parenting roles are associated with larger declines in involvement than fathers’ transitions. Declines in fathers’ involvement following a mother’s relationship or parenting transition are largest when children are young. We discuss the implications of our results for the well-being ofnonmarital children and the quality of nonmarital relationships faced with high levels of relationship instability and multiple-partner fertiliy.

The protective effects of neighborhood collective efficacy on British children growing up in deprivation: a developmental analysis.

This article reports on the influence of neighborhood-level deprivation and collective efficacy on childrens antisocial behavior between the ages of 5 and 10 years. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to characterize the developmental course of antisocial behavior among children in the E-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, an epidemiological cohort of 2,232 children. Children in deprived versus affluent neighborhoods had higher levels of antisocial behavior at school entry (24.1 vs. 20.5, p < .001) and a slower rate of decline from involvement in antisocial behavior between the ages of 5 and 10 (-0.54 vs. -0.78, p < .01). Neighborhood collective efficacy was negatively associated with levels of antisocial behavior at school entry (r = -.10, p < .01) but only in deprived neighborhoods; this relationship held after controlling for neighborhood problems and family-level factors. Collective efficacy did not predict the rate of change in antisocial behavior between the ages of 5 and 10. Findings suggest that neighborhood collective efficacy may have a protective effect on children living in deprived contexts.

The Causal Effects of Father Absence

The literature on father absence is frequently criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to take account of possible omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We review studies that have responded to this critique by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models. Our assessment is that studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs. The evidence is strongest and most consistent for outcomes such as high school graduation, childrens social-emotional adjustment, and adult mental health.

Would Equal Opportunity Mean More Mobility

Adult economic status is positively correlated with parental economic status in every society for which we have data, but no democratic society is entirely comfortable with this fact. As a result, all democratic societies have adopted policies aimed at reducing the effect of family background on life chances, and most left-of-center political parties think that governments should do even more. This paper makes two main arguments. First, equal opportunity does not imply eliminating all sources of economic resemblance between parents and children. Specifically, equal opportunity does not require that society eliminate the effects of all inherited differences in ability. Nor does it require that society prevent parents from transmitting different values to their children regarding the importance of economic success relative to other goals. Second, the size of the correlation between the economic status of parents and their children is not a good indicator of how close a society has come to equalizing opportunity. Measuring equality of opportunity requires data on why successful parents tend to have successful children. In particular, it requires data on the degree to which a society has minimized obstacles to economic success that we know how to alter, such as parental neglect and ineptitude, inequitable distribution of effective teachers, and labor market practices that favor the well-born.

More than Bricks and Mortar: Neighborhood Frames, Social Processes, and the Mixed‐Income Redevelopment of a Public Housing Project

Policy initiatives to deconcentrate poverty through mixed–income redevelopment were motivated in part by the desire to reduce social isolation and social disorganization in high–poverty neighborhoods. This article examines whether the presence of higher–income neighbors decreased social isolation or improved social organization in a Boston public housing project that was redeveloped into a HOPE VI mixed–income community. Based on in–depth interviews and neighborhood observation, I find that it was the lower–income former public housing residents who were primarily involved in creating neighborhood–based social ties, providing and receiving social support, and enforcing social control within the neighborhood, rather than the higher–income newcomers. This variation in neighborhood engagement stemmed from the different ways that long–term and newer residents perceived and interpreted their neighborhood surroundings. These differences were generated by residents’ comparisons of current and past neighborhood environments and by neighborhood reputations. Residents’ perceptions of place may thus influence whether mixed–income redevelopment can reduce social isolation and improve social organization in high–poverty neighborhoods and, more generally, whether changes in neighborhood structural characteristics translate into changes in social dynamics.

Trends in the economic consequences of marital and cohabitation dissolution in the United States.

Mothers in the United States use a combination of employment, public transfers, and private safety nets to cushion the economic losses of romantic union dissolution, but changes in maternal labor force participation, government transfer programs, and private social networks may have altered the economic impact of union dissolution over time. Using nationally representative panels from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) from 1984 to 2007, we show that the economic consequences of divorce have declined since the 1980s owing to the growth in married women’s earnings and their receipt of child support and income from personal networks. In contrast, the economic consequences of cohabitation dissolution were modest in the 1980s but have worsened over time. Cohabiting mothers’ income losses associated with union dissolution now closely resemble those of divorced mothers. These trends imply that changes in marital stability have not contributed to rising income instability among families with children, but trends in the extent and economic costs of cohabitation have likely contributed to rising income instability for less-advantaged children.

The Role of Earned Income Tax Credit in the Budgets of Low-Income Households

The annual receipt of large tax refunds, primarily due to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), provides households with unusual opportunities to pay old bills and build assets. To examine these opportunities, the study surveys 194 black, Latino, and white parents who received EITC refunds of at least

The compositional and institutional sources of union dissolution for married and unmarried parents in the United States.

1,000; in-depth interviews followed 6 months later. The majority of households (57 percent) report that they planned to allocate a considerable portion of their refund to savings, and 39 percent are estimated to accomplish their goal. Although 72 percent of the sample planned to pay bills and debt with the refund, 84 percent are found to do so. The results also suggest that households often readjust planned allocations to meet emergencies, debt, and bills. Despite setbacks, many recipients have significant asset accumulation goals, which they say are fueled by the expectation of ongoing annual tax refunds.

The Family-Go-Round: Family Complexity and Father Involvement from a Father’s Perspective

Unmarried parents have less stable unions than married parents, but there is considerable debate over the sources of this instability. Unmarried parents may be more likely than married parents to end their unions because of compositional differences, such as more disadvantaged personal and relationship characteristics, or because they lack the normative and institutional supports of marriage, thus rendering their relationships more sensitive to disadvantage. In this article, we evaluate these two sources of union instability among married, cohabiting, and dating parents following the birth of a shared child, using five waves of longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Using discrete-time event history models, we find that demographic, economic, and relationship differences explain more than two-thirds of the increased risk of dissolution for unmarried parents relative to married parents. We also find that differential responses to economic or relationship disadvantage do not explain why unmarried parents are more likely to end their unions than married parents.

The Relationship Contexts of Young Disadvantaged Men

Men who have children with several partners are often assumed to be “deadbeats” who eschew their responsibilities to their children. Using data from the nationally representative National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort (NLSY-97), we show that most men in complex families intensively parent the children of one mother while being less involved, or not involved at all, with children by others. Repeated qualitative interviews with 110 low-income noncustodial fathers reveal that men in complex families often engage with and provide, at least to some degree, for all of the biological and stepchildren who live in one mother’s household. These activities often exceed those extended to biological children living elsewhere. Interviews also show that by devoting most or all of their resources to the children of just one mother, men in complex families feel successful as fathers even if they are not intensively involved with their other biological children.