Using data from a sample of 1,149 adolescents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health who have both a resident stepfather and a nonresident biological father, this study examines the prevalence, antecedents, and consequences of adolescents' closeness to their stepfathers and nonresident fathers. Findings demonstrate that adolescents vary greatly in their likelihood of having close relationships with one or both of their fathers, but when they do so, they appear to benefit. Close relationships with both stepfathers and nonresident fathers are associated with better adolescent outcomes, with ties to stepfathers being somewhat more influential than ties to nonresident fathers.

Using data from 453 adolescents in Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households, we examine how multiple dimensions of nonresident father involvement are associated with different dimensions of child well-being. Father-child relationship quality and responsive fathering are modestly associated with fewer externalizing and internalizing problems among adolescents. The quality of the mother-child relationship, however, has stronger effects on child well-being. Nevertheless, even if adolescents have weak ties to mothers, those who have strong ties to nonresident fathers exhibit fewer internalizing problems and less acting out at school than adolescents who have weak ties to both parents. Adolescents are worst off on a range of outcomes when they have weak ties to both their mothers and nonresident fathers. Keywords child/adolescent well-being; divorce; father-child relations; nonresident parentingPast research has demonstrated the many disadvantages faced by children who grow up apart from their fathers (Amato, 2000;McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Although half of all U.S. children face this situation for some period during their childhood (Bianchi, 1990), a father's absence from the household does not necessarily mean that he is absent from his child's life (King, 1994a). A significant number of nonresident fathers still maintain ties with their children (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004), although the dynamics and consequences of this relationship are not well understood. Increased attention is needed to understand the role of nonresident fathers in their children's lives and the ways in which involvement by nonresident fathers can promote child well-being (King, 1994b).The primary aim of this study is to assess how multiple dimensions of nonresident father involvement are associated with different dimensions of adolescent well-being. Prior research in this area has had one or more significant weaknesses that have limited our understanding including the use of small and unrepresentative samples (e.g., Simons, Whitbeck, Beaman, & Conger, 1994), reliance on limited measures of nonresident father involvement (e.g., Greene & Moore, 2000), exclusive reliance on mothers' reports of nonresident fathers' involvement with their children (e.g., King & Heard, 1999) or use of a single reporter for both nonresident father involvement and child outcomes (e.g., Manning & Lamb, 2003), failure to simultaneously consider the role of the mother-child relationship (King, 1994a), failure to consider whether the effects of nonresident father involvement are the same for different groups of children (e.g., Stewart, 2003), the exclusion of children who have little or no contact with their fathers (e.g., Simons et al., 1994) thereby omitting those with the lowest levels of nonresident father involvement, and the exclusion of children born outside of marriage (e.g., Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch, 1996) thereby omitting a growing number of children with nonresident fathers. Nearly a third of children are now born outside of marr...

We examine the importance of the coparental relationship for nonresident fathers’ ties to their children. Using data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households, we focus on the link between two dimensions of coparenting, cooperative coparenting and conflict over childrearing, and three dimensions of nonresident father involvement, contact, relationship quality, and responsive fathering. Cooperative coparenting predicts more frequent father‐child contact, which in turn predicts higher relationship quality and more responsive fathering. Conflict over childrearing, however, is not significantly related to nonresident father involvement. Findings are consistent across different groups of children. Results suggest that cooperative coparenting between parents who live apart is associated with stronger ties between nonresident fathers and their children.

We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY79) from 1979 to 2002 and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY) from 1986 to 2002 to describe the number, shape, and population frequencies of nonresident father contact trajectories over a 14-year period using growth mixture models. The resulting 4-category classification indicated that nonresident father involvement is not adequately characterized by a single population with a monotonic pattern of declining contact over time. Contrary to expectations, about two-thirds of fathers were consistently either highly involved or rarely involved in their children's lives. Only one group, constituting approximately 23% of fathers, exhibited a clear pattern of declining contact. In addition, a small group of fathers (8%) displayed a pattern of increasing contact. A variety of variables differentiated between these groups, including the child's age at father-child separation, whether the child was born within marriage, the mother's education, the mother's age at birth, whether the father pays child support regularly, and the geographical distance between fathers and children.

Using data from the child supplement to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a series of multivariate regression models were tested to determine whether father visitation or the payment of child support are significantly associated with several measures of child welleing. The results indicate that there is limited evidence to support the hypothesis that nonresident father involvement has positive benefits for children. The strongest evidence is for the effect of child support in the domain of academics.