Examining the Antecedents of U.S. Nonmarital Fatherhood
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Examining the Antecedents of U.S. Nonmarital Fatherhood Marcia J. Carlson & Alicia G. VanOrman & Natasha V. Pilkauskas
Published online: 11 April 2013 # Population Association of America 2013
Abstract Despite the dramatic rise in U.S. nonmarital childbearing in recent decades, limited attention has been paid to factors affecting nonmarital fatherhood (beyond studies of young fathers). In this article, we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to examine the antecedents of nonmarital fatherhood, as compared to marital fatherhood. Overall, we find the strongest support across both data sets for education and race/ethnicity as key predictors of having a nonmarital first birth, consistent with prior literature about women’s nonmarital childbearing and about men’s early/teenage fatherhood. Education is inversely related to the risk of nonmarital fatherhood, and minority (especially black) men are much more likely to have a child outside of marriage than white men. We find little evidence that employment predicts nonmarital fertility, although it does strongly (and positively) predict marital fertility. High predicted earnings are also associated with a greater likelihood of marital childbearing but with a lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Given the socioeconomic disadvantage associated with nonmarital fatherhood, this research suggests that nonmarital M. J. Carlson (*) Department of Sociology, Center for Demography and Ecology, and Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. G. VanOrman Department of Sociology and Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin– Madison, Madison, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] N. V. Pilkauskas School of Social Work and Columbia Population Research Center, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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fatherhood may be an important aspect of growing U.S. inequality and stratification both within and across generations. Keywords Nonmarital childbearing . Men’s fertility . Nonmarital fatherhood . First births
Introduction The prevalence of nonmarital births in the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades, with the fraction of births occurring outside of marriage rising sixfold in the latter half of the twentieth century (Ventura and Bachrach 2000). In 2010, fully 41 % of all U.S. births occurred to unmarried parents, with even higher proportions among racial and ethnic minorities: 53 % of Hispanic births and 73 % of black births (Hamilton et al. 2011). The dramatic rise in nonmarital childbearing has generated considerable attention from both researchers and policymakers alike, particularly with respect to the implications for women and children. In turn, an extensive literature has examined the factors associated with women’s nonmarital childbearing and found that low socioeconomic resources (measured by income, educa
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