Swap Reconsidered: Changes in Fathers’ Involvement With Children Across Multiple Partner Low-income Families

• In Event: 2-013 - Nonresident Father Families: Correlates, Family Processes, and Interventions

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Children whose parents have multiple partner fertility (i.e., MPF; children with multiple partners) are at increased risk for externalizing behaviors including delinquency, substance use, and early sexual debut (Dorius & Guzzo, 2014; Fomby & Osbourne, 2017). One pathway through which MPF affects child outcomes is through fathers’ decreased involvement once fathers have additional children with new partners (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2009). We investigated the influence of MPF on father involvement in the context of other theoretically supported personal, relational, and environmental factors among low-income fathers who are disproportionately affected by MPF (Guzzo, 2014). Using a subsample of fathers with MPF, we also tested the swapping hypothesis which posits that fathers voluntarily swap social and financial contributions as they have additional children with new partners (Furstenberg & Harris, 1992). Specifically, we expected that 1) MPF would be associated with lower levels of father involvement controlling for fathers’ illegal hustling, past incarcerations, lower educational attainment, race, mother-father relationship quality, and child’s age, and 2) fathers’ level of involvement with his children from his second family of procreation would be inversely related to his level of involvement with his first family of procreation and vice versa.
Methods: Our sample included 136 fathers (Mage = 28 (SD = 7.8) recruited from four community-based programs in the Midwest. All fathers had reported incomes below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line, and 33% (n=45) of the sample had MPF. The majority of the sample was Black (70%), followed by White (15%), and Latino (15%). Fathers completed demographic information and retrospective life history interviews. Trained coders independently rated each father on the following variables for every year he was a parent: involvement with each child and partner in each family, and participation in employment, education, hustling, and incarceration. Data were used to form a person-year dataset with 1,021 total observations and 232 paternal MPF observations.
Results: Multiple linear regressions with robust standard errors (clustered around father identification) were used to test our hypotheses. Clustering standard errors leaves the estimates unchanged while correcting the bias in standard errors to reflect the true sample size. While MPF was associated significantly with less father involvement with the child in the full sample (B = -1.2, p<.001), it was no longer significant once the mother-father relationship (B = 0.76, p<.001) was added to the model which accounted for most of the variance in father involvement (R2 =.69, F(10,121)= 232.72, p<.001). Regression models predicting involvement in first and second families were analyzed for fathers with MPF. A stronger relationship with the child’s mother was the best predictor of the father’s level of involvement with the child in both the first and second family (see Table 1).
Conclusions: In contrast to the swapping hypothesis, study findings highlight that while MPF is associated with father involvement, the mother-father relationship is the key factor in determining father-child relationship patterns for fathers with and without MPF. Implications for improving the quality of mother-father relationships in complex, low-income families will be discussed.

Authors

• Erica E Coates, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• C. Andrew Conway, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Faraldi, University of Maryland School of Social Work
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kevin Roy, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author