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Journal Article We focused on coparenting support, partner relationship quality, and father engagement in families with young children that did not change structurally over 4 years of participation in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (N = 1,756). There was a significantly stronger and more robust positive association between fathers' perceived coparenting support at age 1 and father engagement at age 3 among nonresidential nonromantic parents compared with residential (married or cohabiting) and nonresidential romantic parents. There was a significantly stronger and positive association…
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Journal Article We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how couple relationship quality and parental engagement are linked over children's early years--when they are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Our sample included 1,630 couples who were coresident over Years 1-3 and 1,376 couples who were coresident over Years 3-5 (1,196 over both periods). Overall, we found that better relationship quality predicted greater parental engagement for both mothers and fathers--especially in the infant to toddler years; in contrast, we found little evidence that parental engagement…
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Journal Article Children can benefit from involved fathers and cooperative parents, a benefit which may be particularly important to the growing population of children born to unmarried parents. This study observes father involvement and coparenting in 5,407 married and unmarried cohabiting couples with a 2-year-old child in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study?Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). A link was found between cooperative coparenting and father involvement for all couples. Compared with married couples, couples who married in response to the pregnancy and couples who remained unmarried showed higher levels…
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Journal Article This study examined whether coparenting support and social support had a stronger effect on father engagement with 3-year-olds among adolescent fathers compared with adult fathers. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,540), we found that coparenting support and paternal social support had a significantly stronger positive effect on adolescent fathers than adult fathers. The associations among coparenting, social support, and adolescent father engagement did not depend on whether the father and mother were romantically involved with each other. The results…
