Programs and policies designed to promote responsible fatherhood are of increasing interest to policymakers. In 2010, Congress allocated $75 million in annual funding to support responsible fatherhood programming designed to promote healthy relationships, better parenting, and greater economic stability. Given the strong policy interest, more information on the characteristics of the fathers who are likely be served by these programs is needed. Data from the Building Strong Families (BSF) evaluation provides a useful opportunity to learn more about the characteristics of low-income, unmarried fathers and how involved they are in the lives of their children.

The BSF study included more than 5,000 unmarried, low-income couples who were expecting or had recently had a baby and volunteered to participate in a relationship skills education program. Surveys of both mothers and fathers were conducted 15 and 36 months after program application. At the 36-month survey, when the BSF focal child was three years old, about 4 in 10 BSF fathers were no longer romantically involved with the mothers of their children and about half did not live with their children.

This presentation will examine the characteristics of resident and nonresident fathers in this low-income population. It will also analyze how levels of father involvement with young children vary across unmarried fathers depending on their residential status and other characteristics. Father involvement outcomes to be examined include measures of the financial support provided, frequency of contact with the child, and how engaged fathers are in care-giving and cognitive and social play activities with their children. In addition, the BSF study conducted direct assessments with a subsample of more than 1,300 fathers to gauge the quality of the father-child relationship. Few other studies of low-income families have included large numbers of direct assessments of father-child interactions. Therefore, the BSF study provides a unique opportunity to examine the quality of these relationships. Using both direct observation and survey data, we will examine how father involvement and fathers’ parenting varies by the fathers’ residential status, as well as other father characteristics, such as father’s education and earnings, history of criminal justice involvement, multiple partner fertility, and initial relationship quality with the mother. In addition, we will use multivariate modeling techniques to examine which factors are most associated with families being at risk of low rates of father involvement—information that may be useful for program targeting purposes.

We will also compare the BSF findings to the findings of the Fragile Families study, which includes a national population of unmarried fathers. The goal of the analysis and the presentation will be to provide useful descriptive information that can guide the design and operation of the next generation of responsible fatherhood programs.