Patterns and Predictors of Coparenting after Unmarried Parents Part

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Running Head: Patterns and Predictors of Coparenting

Patterns and Predictors of Coparenting after Unmarried Parents Part Julia S. Goldberg and Marcia J. Carlson University of Wisconsin-Madison February 2015

______________________________________________________________________________ *An earlier version was presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, New York, NY, August 10-13, 2013. Julia Goldberg ([email protected]) is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Marcia Carlson ([email protected]) is Professor of Sociology and an Affiliate at the Center for Demography and Ecology and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The authors thank the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for funding this research through core funding to the Center for Demography and Ecology (R24HD047873) and through a grant to the second author (R01HD57894). Funding for the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study was also provided by NICHD (grants R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421), as well as a consortium of private foundations (see www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/funders.asp for a complete list). We thank Shannon Cavanagh and Jennifer Augustine for very helpful comments on a prior version. All errors of omission and commission are our own. Direct correspondence to Julia S. Goldberg, 8128 William H. Sewell Social Sciences Building, 1180 Observatory Dr., Madison, WI, 53706. Email: [email protected].

2 Abstract Nonmarital childbearing has increased dramatically during the past several decades, and the majority of unmarried couples will break up while their child is still young. As a result, many children will be raised by their biological parents living apart, ideally working together as effective co-parents. In this paper, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,193) to describe the trajectories of coparenting over six years following the end of a nonmarital relationship and to identify individual and interpersonal characteristics associated with better coparenting over time. Results from growth mixture models suggest that there are four primary trajectories of coparenting over time, and results from multinomial logit models show that couples’ race/ethnicity, maternal health, and parents’ relationship and fertility characteristics are the most salient predictors of coparenting trajectories. These results highlight the heterogeneity of parents’ interaction vis-à-vis their common child after a nonmarital union dissolves and point to the challenges of supporting families and children amidst high instability.

KEYWORDS: Coparenting, Family Process, Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, Unmarried Parents

3 The rise in nonmarital childbearing is by now well-known, with the fraction of births occurring outside of marriage rising six-fold in the latter half of the 20th century (Ventura & Bachrach, 2000). Today, fully 41% of all births in the U.S. occur to unmarried parents, with even higher proportions among racial and ethnic minorities (Hamilton, Martin, & Ventura, 2012). Although many unmarried parents are cohabiting when their child is born, about two-thirds will be living apart by the time their child turns five (Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008). Therefore, parents’ ability to cooperate effectively in rearing their common child—known as coparenting—after their romantic relationship ends is an important aspect of family life for children born to unmarried parents. Indeed, coparenting has been shown to facilitate nonresident fathers’ involvement with their children (Carlson et al., 2008; Sobolewski & King, 2005), and may have positive implications for children’s wellbeing and development. While studies from the 1980s onward have explored the nature of coparenting for biological parents living apart after a divorce (Ahrons, 1981; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980), less well understood is how parents interact vis-à-vis their common child after a nonmarital dissolution. In this paper, we extend the recent literature about nonmarital families by exploring the patterns and predictors of coparenting after union dissolution using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. First, we provide new evidence about the levels and trajectories of coparenting among couples who break up following an unmarried birth, utilizing growth mixture models to identify the dominant patterns of coparenting across three waves of data over six years. Second, we evaluate the individual and interpersonal characteristics associated with consistently high and consistently low levels of coparenting (as compared to other trajectories); this is important for policy and program development in order to identify key risk factors that might be used to target parents for

4 interventions designed to enhance coparenting. Overall, this research provides new evidence about how parents jointly carry out their responsibility of childrearing amidst the instability that is now typical after a nonmarital birth, as well as the factors that may encourage or deter such. Background and Previous Research Patterns of Coparenting after Union Dissolution Although scholarship on coparenting has dramatically expanded over the past 15-20 years, its conceptual roots date back to Minuchin’s (1974) much earlier work that identified the family’s “executive subsystem” as parents’ supportive partnership in socializing and rearing their common child(ren). In a recent volume designed to synthesize research on coparenting, McHale and Lindahl (2011) broadly defined coparenting as “an enterprise undertaken by two or more adults who together take on the care and upbringing of children for whom they share responsibility” (p. 3). While different scholars have identified particular ways of conceptualizing and measuring coparenting, common to all is identification of some aspect of support, solidarity, or parental ‘alliance’ (Feinberg, 2003; McHale, Kuersten-Hogan, & Rao, 2004; McHale & Lindahl, 2011). Among parents living together (especially within marriage), coparenting happens in the context of everyday interactions, where nuclear family roles and boundaries are clear (Minuchin, 1974). When parents live apart, the family ‘boundary’ is no longer intact, and family roles, relationships, and responsibilities are more ambiguous, and communication is less frequent (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991). Coparenting may be even more important to family life when parents do not share a household and thus do not experience routine daily interactions related to childrearing (Maccoby, Depner, & Mnookin, 1990). In the best of circumstances, parents are able to cooperate in jointly rearing their children across two distinct households by

5 communicating effectively in coordinating children’s care and activities and mutually supporting one another (Margolin, Gordis, & John, 2001). This type of effective coparenting has been shown to buffer children against the negative effects of divorce (Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Seltzer, 1994). Although coparenting was first identified as an important topic amidst the major rise in divorce in the 1970s, recently a handful of studies have focused on the nature and implications of coparenting among unmarried parents, particularly after the couple’s relationship has ended. Much of this work has used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (the same dataset we use in this paper), a national study of urban births in the late 1990s with an oversample of nonmarital births (McLanahan, 2009). In general, this research shows that the average level of coparenting is relatively high but declines in the years after a nonmarital relationship has ended (Carlson et al., 2008; Kamp Dush, Kotila, & Schoppe-Sullivan, 2011). This research may be misleading, however, because it focuses on average levels of coparenting across all couples living apart and does not tell us whether the typical pattern of decline is shared by all parents living apart. Given differences in parents’ individual and interpersonal characteristics—and how their lives unfold over time in terms of new partners and children—we might expect considerable heterogeneity in patterns of coparenting over time. Our paper addresses this topic by examining whether there are distinct coparenting trajectories among this population. Antecedents of Coparenting Patterns A second objective of our paper is to identify the factors that promote or deter unmarried parents’ ability to coparent effectively after their romantic relationship ends. We know that unmarried parents are typically young and socioeconomically disadvantaged—most have a high school degree or less (McLanahan, 2011). They also lack the legal and social benefits of

6 marriage that help circumscribe and ‘institutionalize’ family roles and relationships (Cherlin, 2004). Therefore, unmarried parents face a number of barriers and challenges toward being able to effectively cooperate after their relationship ends, even as compared to divorced parents (Waller & Dwyer Emory, 2014). In terms of factors that may enhance or deter effective coparenting, studies of coresident (especially married) parents emphasize that men’s roles as partners and parents tend to be part of a “package deal,” implying that men’s ties to children are strengthened by their romantic tie to the children’s mother (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991; Townsend, 2002). When the “package” comes apart with union dissolution, the type and quality of the parents’ relationship when they were still together may matter for coparenting (Kamp Dush et al., 2011). For example, couples who were previously in a highly-committed relationship may have cooperated more as parents prior to the end of their relationship than couples who were not, and they may continue to have a stronger coparental relationship after their romantic relationship ends (Insabella, Williams, & Pruett, 2003). Mothers’ and fathers’ relationships and childbearing with new partners also likely influence their investment in the coparental relationship vis-à-vis their prior common child. Jealousy and distrust of new partners may pose formidable obstacles to parents’ cooperation in raising their child (Edin & Kefalas, 2005). In addition, nonresident fathers may choose to “swap” their investments in children from previous relationships for new parental roles with coresidential children (Edin & Nelson, 2013; Manning & Smock, 1999, 2000). While the existing literature suggests that among parents who are no longer together, their interpersonal relationships (both with each other and with new partners) play a large role in their ability to coparent, it is less clear what role their individual and demographic characteristics should play in this process. Older age and higher levels of education may bring knowledge and

7 maturity that facilitate being able to manage the complexities of raising a child apart. Parents with greater economic resources are better able to manage coordinating childrearing across two households (Booth & Amato, 1991). There is also some evidence that coparenting varies by parents’ race/ethnicity; black parents may coparent more effectively, in part because higher levels of nonmarital childbearing among African Americans—and the ensuing union instability—have made childrearing across households more normative among this group (Mincy & Pouncy, 2007). Only a handful of studies have examined the antecedents of coparenting among unmarried, nonresident parents. The results of these studies suggest that parents’ human capital characteristics, relationship history, and relationships with new partners and children tend to be predictive of unmarried parents’ coparenting (Bronte-Tinkew & Horowitz, 2010; Carlson & Högnäs, 2011; Kamp Dush et al., 2011; Waller, 2012). Our study aims to extend this literature by examining the characteristics associated with particular trajectories of coparenting over time (instead of the average level) among parents who are no longer in a relationship in order to identify key factors that support or deter positive coparenting. In sum, this paper provides new evidence about the patterns and predictors of coparenting among parents who break up after a nonmarital birth, evaluating whether key sub-groups emerge or whether the pattern of average decline observed in prior work applies to all. Given the sizeable fraction of births that now occur outside of marriage—and the high likelihood of union dissolution when children are young—it is important to understand more about unmarried parents’ ability to work together in rearing their common child. Method Data

8 We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study of 4,897 births that occurred between 1998 and 2000 in 75 hospitals in 20 large U.S. cities (see Reichman, Teitler, Garfinkel, & McLanahan, 2001 for a full description of the sampling design); 3,710 of the births were to unmarried parents and 1,187 were to married parents (only biological parents were eligible for inclusion in the study). Mothers and fathers were interviewed in the hospital within 48 hours of the focal child’s birth. To be included in the study, mothers had to complete a baseline interview (1,067 fathers were not interviewed at baseline). Follow-up interviews were conducted with mothers and fathers when the child was approximately one, three, five, and nine years old. Among cases in which the mother completed a baseline interview, completion rates for the four follow-up waves were 89%, 86%, 85%, and 72% for mothers and 69%, 65%, 64%, and 54% for fathers, respectively. (Those who were socioeconomically disadvantaged or of a minority racial/ethnic background were more likely to drop out of the survey.) Unfortunately, completion rates for fathers who lived apart from the mother and focal child were considerably lower than for coresident fathers; for example among cases in which the mother had completed a one-year interview, one-year completion rates were just 56% for nonresident fathers. For this reason, in our main analyses we relied on maternal reports of coparenting, but we report the sensitivity of our results to paternal reports of coparenting (for interviewed fathers) as well. We restricted our sample to 1,718 couples who were unmarried at the focal child’s birth and had ended their relationship by the three-year survey (and did not resume their romantic relationship at a later survey wave). From this sample, we excluded an additional 162 cases (9.4%) in which the focal child did not live with the mother at all survey waves and 363 cases (21.1%) that did not have at least one maternal report of coparenting across all survey waves.

9 This resulted in an analytic sample of 1,193 couples. Within the analytic sample, there was a large amount of missing data, particularly on items reported by fathers at the follow-up waves. Percent missing on the covariates ranged from 0% (mother’s age, child’s gender) to 41% (father’s physical health). Missing covariates were imputed using multiple imputation with chained equations to create 10 complete data sets (Royston, 2004). Measures Coparenting. We constructed our measure of coparenting from mothers’ responses to five items at the three-, five-, and nine-year surveys. The items were developed for the Fragile Families study and assessed key elements of supportive coparenting, including communication, trust, and mutual respect in the parenting role. The items were as follows: 1) “When (father) is with (child) he acts like the father you want for your child,” 2) “You can trust (father) to take good care of (child),” 3) (Father) respects the schedules and rules you make for (child),” 4) “(Father) supports the way you want to raise (child),” and 5) “You and (father) talk about problems that come up with raising (child).” Mothers’ response options were 1 (always true), 2 (sometimes true), 3 (rarely true), and 4 (never true). Consistent with numerous published studies that have utilized these items (e.g., Carlson & Högnäs, 2011; Carlson et al., 2008; Goldberg, forthcoming; Kamp Dush et al., 2011), we combined the third and fourth response categories in order to reduce positive skew in mothers’ responses (reflecting higher levels of coparenting quality). We then reverse-coded and took the average of the five items to create a single measure of coparental relationship quality ranging from 1 = low quality to 3 = high quality. Cronbach’s alpha for this measure was high (.86, .85, and .88 at three, five and nine years, respectively), indicating good inter-item reliability across all three time points. Mothers who reported that the father had not seen the focal child since the previous survey (at the three- and five-year surveys)

10 or in the previous year (at the nine-year survey) were not asked about the quality of their coparental relationship with the child’s father (n = 84 at three years, 187 at five years, and 282 at nine years). We coded these observations as missing (i.e., we did not impute values for these observations), and we discuss the implications of this decision for our findings in the Discussion. Demographic and Human Capital Characteristics. We included a large number of covariates in our models as predictors of parents’ coparenting trajectories. All of these items were measured prior to or at the three-year survey in order to ensure that they preceded the coparenting trajectories. With regard to parents’ demographic and human capital characteristics, mothers’ and fathers’ ages at the focal child’s birth were measured in years. Mothers’ race/ethnicity was represented with dummy variables for non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, or another race; a separate dummy variable was used to indicate whether the father was of a different race/ethnic background from the mother. Parents’ education at the focal child’s birth was represented with dummy variables for whether the mother had less than a highschool education, a high-school degree or some college, or a bachelor’s degree or higher; a separate variable was used to indicate whether the father had more education than the mother. Dummy variables were used to indicate whether the mother and father lived with their own biological parents at age 15. Mothers’ and fathers’ physical health at the three-year survey was self-reported on a scale ranging from 1 = poor to 5 = excellent. Finally, dummy variables were used to indicate whether the mother and father were unemployed at the three-year survey, and whether the father had ever been incarcerated by the time of the three-year survey. Child Characteristics. A dummy variable was used to indicate whether the child was a boy. The child’s ‘difficult’ temperament at the one-year survey was represented as the average of mothers’ responses to the following three items from the Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability

11 (EAS) Temperament scale (Buss & Plomin, 1984): 1) “(Child) often fusses and cries,” 2) “(Child) gets upset easily,” and 3) “(Child) reacts strongly when upset.” Each item was measured on a continuous scale ranging from 1 = not at all like my child to 5 = very much like my child, with higher scores indicating more difficult temperaments (Cronbach’s alpha was .62). Relationship and Fertility Characteristics. A dummy variable indicated whether the parents were coresident at the time of the focal child’s birth. The quality of their romantic relationship at the time of the birth (or prior to the birth for parents who ended their relationship before the child was born) was measured from the average of mothers’ responses to four items assessing their perceived supportiveness in the relationship on a scale ranging from 1 = low relationship quality to 3 = high relationship quality. Sample items included, “(Father) is fair and willing to compromise when you have a disagreement” and “(Father) encourages or helps you do things that are important to you.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .65. A continuous variable was used to indicate the number of months since parents’ romantic relationship had ended (at the three-year survey). Finally, dummy variables indicated whether mothers and fathers were in a relationship with another partner or had a child with another partner by the three-year survey. Analytic Strategy To describe patterns of coparenting among parents living apart after a nonmarital birth (research question #1), we utilized growth mixture models (GMM; Jung & Wickrama, 2008). This technique is similar to standard latent growth curve models (LGCM) in that it accounts for repeated observations of an outcome variable in a single model, which is advantageous for studying change over time. However, unlike latent growth curve models, which estimate a single intercept and slope representing the average trajectory of the entire sample, GMM allows for differences in growth parameters across subsamples. It does this by estimating latent trajectory

12 classes—i.e., different groups with distinct means and variances for the growth parameters. A notable strength of GMM is that it does not require the researcher to specify the number of classes in advance; instead they are inferred from the data. A variety of fit indices can then be used to determine the appropriate number of latent classes that emerge. In this study, we chose the model with the lowest Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) and a significant Lo-MendallRubin (2001) Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT) statistic (Jung & Wickrama, 2008; Nagin, 2005). We used the latent class growth analysis variant of GMM in which the variance and covariance estimates of the growth parameters within each latent class are set to zero (Jung & Wickrama, 2008). All of our growth models were estimated in MPlus Version 7.1 (Muthén & Muthén, 19982012). After estimating the patterns of coparenting following a nonmarital break-up, we then examined variables that may serve as early predictors of couples’ coparenting trajectory (research question #2). To conduct this analysis, we first assigned couples to their predicted coparenting group from the GMM analysis. We then used multinomial logistic regression to identify factors that predicted patterns of coparenting over time. Results Descriptive Statistics Table 1 presents descriptive information about the sample. Mothers generally reported a moderate level of quality in the coparental relationship, with a mean at each time point of just over 2.0 on a scale ranging from 1.0 to 3.0. On average, mothers were just over 23 years old at the time of the focal child’s birth. Fathers were somewhat older—around 27.5 years. Fully 67% of mothers identified as non-Hispanic Black, and another 19% identified as Hispanic. In terms of education, 39% of mothers had less than a high-school degree, and another 60% had a highschool degree or some college; very few mothers had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Just under

13 half of fathers had been incarcerated by the time of the three-year survey. On average, parents had been broken up for just over 24 months by the time of the three-year survey; in other words, most couples that we observe broke up about a year after the focal child’s birth. Finally, a large percentage of mothers and fathers were in a relationship with another partner (42% of mothers and 61% of fathers) or had had a child with another partner (49% of mothers and 63% of fathers) by the three-year survey. Patterns of Coparenting We first fit a traditional latent growth curve model to examine the mean coparenting trajectory for the full sample in order to confirm the declining average level of coparenting observed in prior research (e.g., Kamp Dush et al., 2011). Following this, we estimated a series of growth mixture models with one to five classes. The results of this analysis indicated that a four-class solution fit the data best. The results from the LGCM and GMM are displayed in Figure 1 and Table 2. Looking first at the figure, by comparing the trend for the overall sample (the gray line in the middle) to the trends for the separate latent classes (the black lines), we can see that examining only average levels of coparenting fails to capture important variation in patterns of coparenting over time. Table 2 displays the fitted growth parameters upon which Figure 1 is based. The first column of the table displays the results from the LGCM. The parameters from this model indicate that the mean intercept on coparenting for the overall sample was 2.13, and the mean slope was -0.01 (both statistically significant at p < .05). This suggests that at three years, mothers generally reported that their coparental relationship with the nonresident father was of moderate quality and that the quality declined very slightly over time.

14 The results from the GMM (columns 2-5), however, tell a very different story. The growth parameters vary widely across classes, with classes 1 and 2 displaying relatively high intercepts (2.68 and 2.32, respectively) suggesting a high level of coparenting quality at 3 years, and classes 3 and 4 displaying low intercepts (1.57 and 1.34, respectively) suggesting a low level of coparenting quality at 3 years. For classes 1 and 4, the slopes were neither large nor statistically significant, suggesting that coparenting (at either the high or low end of the spectrum) remained stable from three to nine years. For class 2, the slope was negative and significant (-0.14) representing a decline in coparenting over the study period. In contrast, for class 3, the slope was positive and significant (0.16) representing an improvement over the study period. Based on these patterns of coparenting over time, we refer to class 1 as ‘high-high,’ class 2 as ‘high-low,’ class 3 as ‘low-high,’ and class 4 as ‘low-low.’ The bottom rows of the table present the number and proportion of cases in each class: 41% of parents maintained a highquality coparental relationship over time, 20% of parents had a high-quality coparental relationship at three years but experienced a decline over time, 13% of parents had a low-quality coparental relationship at three years but experienced improvement over time, and 25% of parents had a consistently low-quality coparental relationship. Predictors of Coparenting Next, we were interested in identifying variables that predicted parents’ membership in these distinct coparenting classes. We estimated two multinomial logistic regression models, one using parents who displayed consistently high levels of coparenting as the reference category (Table 3) and one using parents who displayed consistently low levels of coparenting as the reference category (Table 4). Although the tables show comparisons between the reference category and all other classes, in the text we focus on three comparisons that were most relevant

15 to our goal of understanding the factors that promote or deter effective coparenting. These include parents who displayed similar levels of coparenting at three years but diverged by nine years (high-low versus high-high and low-high versus low-low) and parents who displayed consistently negative versus consistently positive coparenting (low-low versus high-high). High-Low versus High-High. Looking at the first column in Table 3, among those who start out at a high level of coparenting, a handful of demographic and human capital characteristics predicted a decline in coparenting versus remaining high. White parents were significantly more likely to experience a decline in coparenting than Black parents, whereas parents who were a different race/ethnicity from one another were less likely to experience a decline than parents who were in the same racial/ethnic group. Mothers’ physical health at the three-year survey was negatively associated with being in the high-low class versus the highhigh class; in other words, mothers’ better health was a significant predictor of more positive coparenting. In contrast, mothers’ unemployment increased the likelihood of being in the highlow class versus the high-high class. With regards to child characteristics, parents of boys were more likely to be in the high-low class than the high-high class. Finally, three relationship and fertility characteristics were associated with differences in these coparenting patterns: Parents who reported having a higher-quality relationship at the focal child’s birth were less likely to experience a decline in coparenting, as were parents in which the mother had a child with another partner by the three-year survey. In contrast, when the father had a child with another partner, parents were more likely to experience a decline in coparenting quality. Low-Low versus High-High. Table 3 also displays differences between couples who had a consistently low-quality coparental relationship versus those who had a consistently highquality relationship. Looking first at demographic and human capital characteristics, mothers’

16 race was again a significant predictor: Mothers who were White, Hispanic, or of another race had a higher likelihood of being in the low-low class than Black mothers. Mothers who graduated from high school or had some college were more likely to be in the low-low class than mothers who had less than a high-school education. Mothers’ physical health was positively associated with consistently high coparenting. In contrast, fathers’ unemployment and incarceration were associated with low levels of coparenting. With regard to child characteristics, children’s more ‘difficult’ temperament was predictive of low levels of coparenting quality. Finally, a number of relationship and fertility characteristics were predictive of differences in these coparenting patterns. Two characteristics that were negatively associated with having a consistently lowquality coparental relationship were parents’ relationship quality at the time of the focal child’s birth and mothers’ having a child by another partner. Factors that increased the likelihood of having a consistently low-quality coparental relationship were the number of months that had passed since the end of parents’ romantic relationship, mothers’ relationship with a new partner, and father’s multipartnered fertility. Low-High versus Low-Low. Table 4 displays comparisons between parents who were in the low-high class versus those who were in the low-low class. This comparison is particularly interesting because it illuminates the factors associated with improvements in coparenting over time among parents who start out with a poor coparenting relationship. Only two demographic and human capital characteristics predicted differences in these coparenting patterns: Mothers who were White were less likely to experience improvements in coparenting than mothers who were Black. Fathers’ unemployment was also negatively associated with improvements in coparenting. Neither of the child characteristics was associated with differences in these coparenting patterns. However, a handful of relationship and fertility characteristics were:

17 Parents’ relationship quality at the time of the focal child’s birth was positively associated with improvements in coparenting. In contrast, the number of months that had passed since the end of parents’ romantic relationship was negatively associated with improvements in coparenting, as was mothers’ being in a relationship with a new partner. Sensitivity Analyses In order to test the sensitivity of our results to parental gender, we re-ran all of our models using fathers’ reports of the quality of the coparental relationship (N = 860; results not shown but available upon request). Fathers responded to the same five coparenting items as mothers at the three- and five-year surveys, and to three of these five items at the nine-year survey (fathers were no longer asked to respond to the first and third items at nine years). Another important difference between mothers’ and fathers’ reports was that fathers were asked to reference mothers’ coparenting ability, whereas mothers reported about fathers’ coparenting ability. As with mothers’ reports, we again combined the third and fourth response categories to reduce positive skew in fathers’ responses. We then reverse-coded and took the average of the items to create a measure of coparenting quality ranging from 1 = low quality to 3 = high quality (alpha = .73 at three years, .85 at five years, and .75 at nine years). The correlations between mothers’ and fathers’ reports of coparenting was small to moderate (.18 at three years, .24 at five years, and .32 at nine years), which was not surprising given that mothers and fathers were asked to report about their perception of the other parent’s coparenting abilities rather than the joint coparenting interaction between them. When fathers’ reports were used, we found that the latent growth curve model of coparenting for the full sample yielded a slightly higher intercept and steeper slope than when mothers’ reports were used (intercept = 2.58, slope = -0.03, both

18 significant at p < .01), indicating that interviewed fathers had a somewhat more positive initial perception of coparenting but also perceived a slightly greater rate of decline over time. Despite these minor inconsistencies between mothers’ and fathers’ reports of coparenting, the results from the growth mixture model based on fathers’ reports were remarkably similar to those based on mothers’ reports. We again found that a four-class model fit the data best, with the classes corresponding to ‘high-high,’ ‘high-low,’ ‘low-high,’ and ‘lowlow’ patterns of coparenting. All of the intercepts and slopes were statistically significant at p < .05. A higher fraction of the sample (66%, n = 565) maintained a high-quality coparental relationship over time (intercept = 2.82, slope = -0.02), 8% (n = 65) had a high-quality coparental relationship at three years but experienced a sizeable decline over time (intercept = 2.69, slope = -0.19), 14% (n = 122) had a low- to moderate-quality coparental relationship at three years but experienced improvement over time (intercept = 2.09, slope = 0.06), and 13% (n = 108) had a low-quality coparental relationship at three years and experienced a slight, further decrease over time (intercept = 1.72, slope = -0.05). However, even though fathers’ reports yielded the same four classes as mothers’ reports, it is important to note that there was only moderate overlap in parents’ classification; of the 860 couples in which both mothers and fathers reported on coparenting, only 384 (45%) were categorized in the same class regardless of which parents’ report was used. Results from the multinomial logit models indicated that many—but not all—of the predictors of coparenting were robust to our decision to use fathers’ reports of coparenting. With regards to parents’ demographic and human capital characteristics, Black parents again displayed better coparenting trajectories than parents who were White, Hispanic, or another race. Unlike the findings based on maternal reports however, parents’ physical health, unemployment, and

19 fathers’ incarceration were not strongly related to fathers’ reports of coparenting. With regard to child characteristics, parents of boys again tended to display worse coparenting trajectories than parents of girls. Finally, turning to relationship and fertility characteristics, the quality of parents’ romantic relationship at the child’s birth was again strongly associated with better coparenting trajectories, while fathers’ relationship with a new partner and mothers’ multipartnered fertility were associated with worse coparenting trajectories. In results not shown, we also evaluated coparenting separately for parents of boys versus girls. Overall, the growth mixture models revealed similar patterns regardless of child gender, with the same four latent classes emerging (high-high, high-low, low-high, and low-low). Parents of girls were slightly more likely to be high-high or low-high than parents of boys, while parents of boys were slightly more likely to be high-low than parents of girls. Discussion This paper provides new evidence about the patterns and predictors of coparenting among couples who break up within three years of a nonmarital birth. Given the large fraction of births that now occur outside of marriage—and the fact that the vast majority of these couples will break up by the time their child enters grade school—this is an important topic with ramifications for a large number of U.S. children. One of the key contributions of this research was to examine variation in patterns of coparenting over time, rather than simply estimating the average coparenting trajectory among all parents living apart after a nonmarital birth. When we do look at the average, levels of coparenting in our sample were moderate and declined slightly over a six-year period, consistent with several recent studies showing modest declines in coparenting among nonresident parents who had a child outside of marriage (Carlson et al., 2008; Kamp Dush et al., 2011). However,

20 this general trend belied quite diverse patterns across different groups of parents. The results of our growth mixture model suggest that four distinct groups emerged—parents who maintained a high-quality coparental relationship in the years following their break-up, those who experienced a consistently low-quality relationship, those who experienced improvement, and those who experienced decline. The heterogeneity of coparenting experiences after nonmarital union dissolution is striking and points to the importance of considering sub-groups, instead of assuming that the average fits all couples. These findings are in accord with recent work showing that nonresident father-child contact also does not decline monotonically over time (as prior work had suggested) but falls into four distinct patterns of high-high, high-low, low-high and low-low involvement (Cheadle, Amato, & King, 2010; Ryan, Kalil, & Ziol-Guest, 2008). It was notable that only a small number of factors predicted parents’ pattern of coparenting after a break-up, and better coparenting does not appear to strongly be a function of higher socioeconomic status (such as age, education and employment). Race/ethnicity and maternal health are important antecedents—parents’ black race and mothers’ better health consistently predict being in the high-high group, versus all other patterns. Black mothers were especially likely to experience consistently high levels of coparenting—and less likely to experience consistently low or declining levels of coparenting—than White or Hispanic mothers; this likely reflects the greater normativity of nonmarital births among Blacks and hence parents’ ability to better navigate cooperation in childrearing within a non-traditional family context (Mincy & Pouncy, 2007). Beyond these individual factors, interpersonal factors measuring aspects of parents’ romantic relationships and fertility (both with each other and new partners) appeared to be especially relevant. This is consistent with findings from two recent studies (Carlson & Högnäs,

21 2011; Kamp Dush et al., 2011) which used Fragile Families data to examine the antecedents of coparenting from the time of a child’s birth to around age five. We found that the quality of parents’ romantic relationship when they were still together was a strong and consistent predictor of their subsequent coparenting trajectory, which suggests that couples who are able to support each other as partners are better able to do so as parents, even after their romantic relationship comes to an end. Two other factors that were highly predictive of coparenting were parents’ repartnering and multipartnered fertility. Couples in which the mother began a relationship with a new partner were more likely to be at a consistently low level of coparenting. However, mothers’ multipartnered fertility was positively associated with coparenting—mothers who had a child by another partner were more likely to be in the consistently high coparenting group than to decline from high to low or be consistently low. On the other hand, fathers’ multipartnered fertility had a negative impact on the quality of parents’ coparental relationship—when men had a child with another partner, parents were less likely to be in the high-high group compared to all three other trajectories. Because children tend to reside with their mother after union dissolution, these findings conjointly suggest that having a child who lives elsewhere has a stronger negative effect on coparenting than having a child who resides with the focal child. Fathers may disengage from their nonresidential child to invest more time in new, coresidential children (Edin & Nelson, 2013; Manning & Smock, 1999, 2000), whereas the presence of other children in the same household may increase mothers’ investments in any one particular biological child. Several other factors were sometimes—but not consistently—shown to affect coparenting. Fathers’ history of incarceration was associated with lower odds of experiencing consistently high levels of coparenting; fathers’ spending time in jail makes positive parenting interactions more difficult, and the incarceration (or what precipitated such) may have

22 contributed to the ending of the couple’s relationship in the first place. Parents of boys were also less likely to maintain high levels of coparenting in the years following the end of their romantic relationship; this is surprising, given the evidence that boys increase the likelihood of parents’ getting and staying married (Raley & Bianchi, 2006). Given the latter, it could be that the couples with boys who do break up are particularly disadvantaged in terms of their ability to communicate and interact vis-à-vis their common child. This research enhances our understanding of how family life plays out after a nonmarital birth by highlighting heterogentity in the extent to which couples are able to work together in raising their common child(ren). This study also sheds light on factors that place couples at risk of experiencing low or declining levels of coparenting after their romantic relationship ends, which is important given that coparenting has been shown to be positively associated with nonresident fathers’ continued engagement and financial support of their children (Carlson et al., 2008; Goldberg, forthcoming; Sobolewski & King, 2005). For instance, we found that couples who have a low-quality romantic relationship at the time of their child’s birth often struggle to coparent effectively after they break up. Mothers’ re-partnering and fathers’ multipartnered fertility are also negatively associated with subsequent coparenting. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving coparenting among unmarried parents might be especially beneficial if they target parents who display these risk factors. Such interventions to directly enhance coparenting have been shown to be effective among married couples (Feinberg & Kan, 2008), and efforts are underway to tailor these programs for unmarried parents as well. Our study also points to some fruitful avenues for future research. Subsequent studies should examine the association between coparenting and various measures of child wellbeing (including behavioral problems, cognitive ability, educational attainment, etc.) and should

23 consider differential effects of coparenting on children’s outcomes within the trajectory groups. In other words, does each ‘unit’ of coparenting have the same effect on children’s outcomes, regardless of whether the level over time is high, low, or changing? Also, in terms of measurement, here we use a coparenting measure that reflects parents’ views about each other. Moving forward, it would be useful to develop a common measure for both parents in order to evaluate the level of agreement or disagreement between mothers and fathers when reporting about their joint coparental relationship. We also acknowledge several limitations with our paper. First, our exclusive use of maternal reports for both coparenting and the antecedents of coparenting in our main results may have inflated the correlations between these factors, an issue known as ‘shared method variance’ (Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb, 2000). The fact that we generally find similar results using fathers’ reports of coparenting is reassuring. Second, we are focusing on couples who broke up by the three-year survey, which is relatively soon after a nonmarital birth. These couples may be more disadvantaged than other unmarried couples who break up later on (and hence may have lower levels of coparenting to the extent that relationship quality and longevity are shown to enhance subsequent coparenting). Third, for families to be included in our sample, the nonresident father must have had some contact with the focal child prior to the three-, five-, or nine-year survey (because mothers were not asked about the quality of the coparental relationship if this was not the case). Because we can only make inferences about fathers who had at least some interaction with the child, our results of the levels of coparenting are likely overestimates compared to the entire sample of couples who broke up after a nonmarital birth, although we don’t have reason to suspect that estimates of the antecedents are biased. Fourth, the Fragile Families study was comprised of births to biological parents in large U.S. cities; thus, our

24 results may not be generalizable to families who do not meet these sampling criteria (e.g., samesex couples, births outside urban areas). Fifth, as with any longitudinal survey, attrition was not random. For instance, couples who dropped out were more likely to be racial/ethnic minorities and to have lower socioeconomic status than those who remained. We are not able to generalize to couples who were not interviewed. Despite these issues, our study provides important new evidence about the patterns and predictors of unmarried parents’ coparenting after their romantic union has dissolved. Contrary to prior work that has shown a modest decline over time in average levels of coparenting, we find notable variation in coparenting trajectories, with sizeable groups of parents consistently high, consistently low, improving, and declining. Mothers’ and fathers’ ability to work together in childrearing is likely salient to their children’s wellbeing, so it is important to understand the factors that may help parents continue to cooperate with each other in raising their common child after their own romantic relationship has ended. Parents’ relationships and childbearing with new partners (particularly on the part of fathers) appear to present obstacles for high-quality coparenting. In other words, after their relationship dissolves, men and women may find it difficult to successfully navigate their roles as parents amidst increasing family complexity. Given that most unmarried parents are young and have many more years of potential repartnering and childbearing ahead of them, it is likely that the quality of their coparental relationship could decline even further. Unless policies and programs can be developed to reduce the formation of complex families in the first place (unlikely, given limited past evidence that government intervention can change family formation behaviors), programs and policies should recognize that unmarried couples are unlikely to stay together and focus on helping couples effectively coparent their common child while living apart.

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28 Mincy, R. B., & Pouncy, H. (2007). Baby Fathers and American Family Formation: LowIncome, Never-Married Parents in Louisiana before Katrina. New York, NY: Center for Marriage and Families, Institute for American Values. Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (1998-2012). Mplus User's Guide (6th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Muthén and Muthén. Nagin, D. S. (2005). Group-Based Modeling of Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raley, S., & Bianchi, S. (2006). Sons, Daughters, and Family Processes: Does Gender of Children Matter? Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 401-421. Reichman, N. E., Teitler, J. O., Garfinkel, I., & McLanahan, S. S. (2001). Fragile familes: Sample and design. Children and Youth Services Review, 23(4), 303-326. Ryan, R. M., Kalil, A., & Ziol-Guest, K. M. (2008). Longitudinal Patterns of Nonresident Fathers' Involvement: The Role of Resources and Relations. Journal of Marriage and Family, 70(4), 962-977. Seltzer, J. A. (1994). Consequences of Marital Dissolution for Children. Annual Review of Sociology, 20, 235-266. Sobolewski, J. M., & King, V. (2005). The Importance of the Coparental Relationsip for Nonresident Fathers' Ties to Children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67(5), 11961212. Townsend, N. W. (2002). The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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Table 1: Characteristics of Parents Living Apart after a Nonmarital Birth (N = 1,193) M or % Coparenting (M , range = 1 - 3)

(SD)

a

Three years after focal child's birth Five years after focal child's birth Nine years after focal child's birth

2.14 2.15 2.13

(0.71) (0.68) (0.69)

23.13 27.53

(6.36) (9.28)

Demographic and Human Capital Characteristics Age at focal child's birth (M , years) Mother Father Mother's race/ethnicity White non-Hispanic Black non-Hispanic Hispanic Other non-Hispanic Parents different race/ethnicity

12.2 67.2 18.8 1.8 19.7

Mother's education at focal child's birth Less than high school High school degree or some college Bachelor's degree or higher Father has more education than mother

38.6 59.6 1.8 31.3

Lived with biological parents at age 15 Mother Father

27.9 39.4

Physical health (M , range = 1 - 5) Mother Father

3.77 4.09

Unemployed Mother Father

37.8 33.6

Father ever incarcerated

48.8

(1.01) (1.04)

Child Characteristics Child is a boy

47.2

Child 'difficult' temperament at 1-year (M , range = 1 - 5)

2.84

(1.11)

Relationship and Fertility Characteristics Parents coresident at focal child's birth

32.8

Relationship quality at focal child's birth (M , range = 1 - 3)

2.57

(0.38)

24.25

(10.59)

Months since relationship ended In a relationship with other partner Mother Father

42.1 61.4

Had a child with other partner Mother Father

49.2 63.3

Note : All items measured at 3-year survey unless otherwise noted. All figures weighted by city sampling weights. Number of cases unweighted. Multiple imputation for missing covariates. M = mean; SD = standard deviation. a

Sample sizes for the coparenting measures were smaller than the full sample because wave-missing responses were not imputed (n = 1,026 at 3 years, 877 at 5 years, and 622 at 9 years).

Table 2: LGCM and GMM of Coparenting among Parents Living Apart after a Nonmarital Birth Latent Growth Curvea Full Sample

Class 1: High-High

Growth Mixture Modelb Class 2: Class 3: High-Low Low-High

Class 4: Low-Low

Growth Parameters Intercept Slope Sample N Sample Proportion

2.13 ** -0.01 *

1,193 1.00

a

Model fit: χ2 (df): 1.44 (1), RMSEA: .02, CFI: .99.

b

Model fit: BIC: 4,536.29 (14), LRT:92.62**.

† p ≤ .10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01.

2.68 ** -0.01

494 0.41

2.32 ** -0.14 **

240 0.20

1.57 ** 0.16 **

155 0.13

1.34 ** -0.00

304 0.25

Table 3. Multinomial Logistic Regression Model Predicting Coparenting Patterns (High-High as Reference ) High-Low vs. High-High SE RRR β

Low-High vs. High-High SE RRR β

Low-Low vs. High-High SE RRR β

Demographic and Human Capital Characteristics Age at baby's birth Mother Father Mother's race/ethnicity [Black] White non-Hispanic Hispanic Other non-Hispanic

-0.01 -0.01

1.08 ** 0.34 0.00

0.02 0.02

0.99 0.99

0.28 0.25 0.71

2.96 1.40 1.00

-0.03 0.02

0.93 ** 0.81 ** 0.36

0.02 0.02

0.97 1.02

0.34 0.26 0.84

2.54 2.25 1.44

-0.01 -0.02

1.48 ** 0.94 ** 1.06 *

0.99 0.98

0.27 0.23 0.54

4.38 2.55 2.88

0.23

0.84

Parents different race/ethnicity

-0.54 *

0.26

0.58

-0.67 *

0.31

0.51

Mother's education [Less than high school] High school degree or some college Bachelor's degree or higher

-0.03 0.71

0.20 0.54

0.97 2.04

0.41 † 0.76

0.24 0.67

1.52 2.14

0.44 * 0.80

0.20 0.61

1.55 2.22

Father has more education than mother

-0.04

0.22

0.97

0.02

0.26

1.02

0.06

0.21

1.06

Lived with biological parents at age 15 Mother Father

-0.10 -0.30

0.19 0.20

0.90 0.74

0.41 * -0.05

0.21 0.25

1.51 0.95

0.26 -0.23

0.18 0.23

1.30 0.79

Physical health Mother Father

-0.27 ** 0.10

0.08 0.10

0.77 1.11

-0.21 * 0.12

0.09 0.12

0.81 1.13

-0.27 ** 0.11

0.08 0.12

0.76 1.12

Unemployed Mother Father

0.30 † -0.03

0.18 0.20

1.35 0.97

0.13 0.02

0.21 0.23

1.14 1.02

0.30 0.61 **

0.18 0.20

1.35 1.85

0.28

0.18

1.32

0.50 *

0.21

1.65

0.51 **

0.18

1.67

Child is a boy

0.41 **

0.17

1.51

0.19

0.96

0.09

0.16

1.10

Child 'difficult' temperament

0.08

0.08

1.08

0.09

1.22

0.22 **

0.07

1.25

Parents coresident at focal child's birth

-0.02

0.19

0.98

-0.10

0.23

0.91

0.18

0.19

1.19

Relationship quality at focal child's birth

-0.85 **

0.25

0.43

-0.64 *

0.29

0.53

-1.25 **

0.24

0.29

0.00

0.01

1.00

0.01

0.01

1.01

0.03 **

0.01

1.03

In a relationship with other partner Mother Father

-0.13 -0.01

0.18 0.21

0.88 0.99

0.04 0.61 *

0.20 0.26

1.04 1.85

0.47 ** 0.28

0.17 0.21

1.60 1.32

Had a child with other partner Mother Father

-0.43 * 0.42 *

0.18 0.19

0.65 1.52

-0.03 0.45 *

0.21 0.23

0.97 1.57

0.18 0.19

0.70 1.60

Father ever incarcerated

-0.17

0.02 0.02

Child Characteristics -0.04 0.20 *

Relationship and Fertility Characteristics

Months since relationship ended

Note : Brackets [ ] indicate omitted category. N = 1,193. † p ≤ .10, * p ≤ .05, ** p ≤ .01.

-0.36 * 0.47 *

Table 4. Multinomial Logistic Regression Models Predicting Coparenting Patterns (Low-Low as Reference ) High-Low vs. Low-Low SE RRR β

Low-High vs. Low-Low SE RRR β

Demographic and Human Capital Characteristics Age at baby's birth Mother Father

0.00 0.01

0.03 0.02

1.00 1.01

-0.02 0.03

0.03 0.02

0.98 1.03

Mother's race/ethnicity [Black] White non-Hispanic Hispanic Other non-Hispanic

-0.39 -0.60 * -1.06

0.28 0.26 0.73

0.67 0.55 0.35

-0.55 † -0.13 -0.69

0.33 0.27 0.85

0.58 0.88 0.50

Parents different race/ethnicity

-0.37

0.27

0.69

-0.50

0.32

0.60

Mother's education [Less than high school] High school degree or some college Bachelor's degree or higher

-0.47 * -0.09

0.22 0.64

0.63 0.92

-0.02 -0.04

0.25 0.75

0.98 0.96

Father has more education than mother

-0.09

0.24

0.91

-0.04

0.27

0.96

Lived with biological parents at age 15 Mother Father

-0.36 † -0.07

0.21 0.24

0.69 0.94

0.15 0.18

0.22 0.30

1.16 1.20

Physical health Mother Father

0.00 -0.01

0.09 0.14

1.00 0.99

0.06 0.01

0.10 0.14

1.07 1.01

Unemployed Mother Father

0.00 -0.64 **

0.20 0.22

1.00 0.53

-0.17 -0.59 **

0.23 0.23

0.85 0.55

Father ever incarcerated

-0.23

0.20

0.79

-0.01

0.23

0.99

0.32 †

0.19

1.38

-0.13

0.21

0.88

-0.15 †

0.08

0.86

-0.02

0.10

0.98

-0.20

0.22

0.82

-0.28

0.25

0.76

0.40

0.26

1.50

0.61 *

0.29

1.85

Child Characteristics Child is a boy Child 'difficult' temperament Relationship and Fertility Characteristics Parents coresident at focal child's birth Relationship quality at focal child's birth Months since relationship ended

-0.03 **

0.01

0.97

-0.03 *

0.01

0.97

In a relationship with other partner Mother Father

-0.60 ** -0.28

0.19 0.26

0.55 0.75

-0.43 * 0.34

0.22 0.29

0.65 1.40

Had a child with other partner Mother Father

-0.07 -0.05

0.20 0.22

0.93 0.95

0.33 -0.02

0.23 0.25

1.39 0.98

Note : Brackets [ ] indicate omitted category. N = 1,193. † p ≤ .10, * p ≤ 0.05, ** p ≤ 0.01.

Figure 1. Trajectories of coparenting quality among parents living apart after a nonmarital birth. 3.00 Overall

2.75

Coparenting

2.50 High-High (41%)

2.25 2.00

High-Low (20%)

1.75

Low-High (13%)

1.50 1.25

Low-Low (25%)

1.00

3 Years

5 Years

9 Years

Note. Based on estimates from latent growth curve model and growth mixture model. N = 1,193.