Transition into the Labor Force, Marriage and Biological Fatherhood

Cornell University Ithaca, Ithaca NY

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Abstract

This project will use a life course perspective informed by economic theory to address the challenging issue of how young men's transitions into fatherhood, stable unions, and employment are sequenced and linked. Our focus will be on the first transition into biological fatherhood in conjunction with the other transitions that often occur at this stage in the life course: completing education, entry into the labor force, and entry into stable unions. The analyses will focus on describing what the sequences of these transitions are among young men and explore the reciprocal effects of transitions into work, marriage, and cohabitation on the timing of the transition into biological fatherhood. A multidisciplinary team of researchers will examine this issue using nationally representative longitudinal data sets including The National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), the National Survey of Adolescent Males 1988 (NSAM), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). These surveys include samples of young men at different ages during different time periods. The project has three specific aims: (1) To describe the normative sequences of these various and interrelated work and family transitions for different subgroups of young men. (2) To model the joint effects of workforce and romantic union milestones and entry into first births, both within and outside marriage, among men. (3) To examine contextual, cohort and gender differences in the sequencing of these transitions and in the results of the joint models.