Child Care Support By Nonresident Fathers: Are More Fathers Better?

Background and Purpose: Previous research shows that many nonresident fathers provide economic support for their children, either as formal child support or as informal cash or in-kind support. One aspect of nonresident fathers’ support that has been missing in the prior literature is nonresident fathers’ direct child care support for resident mothers. In this article, we report whether low-income mothers receive any child care support from nonresident fathers and their relatives which can help mother’s employment. Given the prevalence of having children with multiple partners among low-income mothers, we also examine whether those who have had children with more than one nonresident father are more or less likely to receive such support.

Methods: We use data from the wave 3 of the Survey of Wisconsin Works Families, a three-wave panel study of a stratified random sample of TANF mothers in Wisconsin who entered the program in 1997-1998; the wave 3 survey collected information on various types of support from nonresident fathers and other economic and demographic information of the mothers for 2003. Our base sample includes 526 mothers who have children under 13 with at least one nonresident father. Our key outcome variables are the existence of and the number of nonresident fathers reported by a mother who (or whose relatives) ever looked after the child so that she could go to work, look for work, or go to school.  Our key independent variable is the number of nonresident fathers of children under 13. After documenting the prevalence of mother’s receipt of child care support from nonresident fathers and their relatives, we employ multivariate logit models to examine the relationship between having children with multiple nonresident fathers and the receipt of child care from any of those fathers.

Results: We found that a substantial proportion of low-income mothers receive child care support from nonresident fathers (40 percent), and 45 percent receive support from either fathers or their families. These results show that nonresident fathers support their children in ways other than cash support or in-kind material support. We also found that while mothers of children with multiple nonresident fathers are not likely to receive child care support from all (or even more than one) nonresident fathers, they are more likely to receive child care support from at least one father than the mothers associated with only one father. From a mother’s perspective, a nonresident father from a previous relationship remains a potential child care resource even if she has a child with another partner.

Conclusions: Our results suggests that future research should take account of nonresident fathers’ child care support to better understand the multifaceted aspects of nonresident fathers’ support for the mothers and children. They also show the importance of considering contributions not just from a single source, but rather the package of support received across all potential supporters.