Family patterns have changed over the past three decades such that a near-majority of children in the United States are likely to spend at least some of their childhood living apart from their biological fathers. Social science research has shown that father involvement, particularly economic support of children, is crucial to children's well-being. Similarly, policy makers are focusing on child support reform as a foundation for improving the life chances of children. Yet to date we have limited direct knowledge or understanding of nonresident fathers' resources, constraints, and changing life circumstances. Using new longitudinal data that follow both spouses after a dissolution, this project addresses several issues critical to understanding the circumstances of nonresidential fathers and the conditions under which they have economic and social ties to children who do not live with them. The investigators provide a contemporary sociodemographic national profile of nonresidential fathers and estimate the extent of their postdisruption parenting responsibilities, which may include parenting new biological or stepchildren. They examine continuity and change in the economic conditions of predisruption and postdisruption households. Analyses evaluate the sources of the disparity in the economic well-being of mothers' and fathers' households after disruption, whether the disparity has changed over time, and investigate the extent to which new family formation and child support payments mitigate or exacerbate the gap. The study links characteristics and changing circumstances of nonresidential fathers and residential mothers to actual economic flows and social ties between children and their fathers. Based on multiple indicators of economic and social ties, the investigators construct a measure of overall nonresidential father involvement to assess the extent to which involvement varies with a father's postdivorce economic circumstances, his predisruption relationship with children, and the new family formations of both parents. They also undertake preliminary investigations of differences in fathers' economic support of children depending on whether the children were born inside or outside of unions.
