Gender Dynamics and Unmarried Fathers' Involvement with Children

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This research interviews 75 low- to moderate-income couples, mostly unmarried, who had a child in 2000 in Chicago, Milwaukee, or New York. This award will fund the third wave of in-depth qualitative interviews with each parent in the sample. Interviews include detailed accounts of the couples' relational history, ongoing couple dynamics, and relationships between each parent and the child. Contributions to the child of time, formal and informal child-support, and in-kind support are described. The study examines how some of these couples break up while others stay together, and how some fathers remain involved with their children while others do not. Two theoretical approaches are important in guiding the analysis of the interviews. Resource-based bargaining predicts that access to resources enables partners to get more of what they want in the relationship but may also make a partner more likely to leave if they are not getting what they want. Gender theories assert that the social pressures on men to follow gender norms may override the otherwise stronger bargaining power of women but that this imbalance may lead to women's exit.