| Abstrakt: |
With a few notable exceptions, researchers have largely ignored how fatherhood impacts men's behavior, especially that of unmarried men. In this project, we consider how men's economic responses to fatherhood varies by the context in which they become fathers. Specifically, our research question is whether the employment response of first-time fathers to fatherhood varies by the relationship of the father to his child's mother. We consider married fathers, fathers cohabiting with their child and the child's mother, and fathers living apart from their child and the child's mother. The data is from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, a longitudinal study following a birth cohort of 3700 children born to unmarried parents and a comparison sample of 1200 children born to married parents (Reischman et al 2000). For this analysis, we restrict the sample to first-time fathers and use structural equation models to model trajectories in hours and weeks worked at four timepoints: baseline (the child's birth), 12 months, 30 months, and 60 months. We find that there are large differences in employment levels among married, cohabiting, and non-resident men in the year before the transition to fatherhood, but that these differences all but disappear by the time the child reaches five years old. We discuss the implications of these findings for our theoretical understandings of the differences between marriage, cohabitation, and non-residential relationships as contexts for parenthood. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
