Nonstandard Work Schedules and Father Involvement Among Nonresident and Resident Fathers

Background and Purpose

Due to large increases in rates of marital dissolution and non-marital births in recent decades, many young children today grow up living away from their biological father.  Nonresident fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives varies substantially (Carlson & Berger, 2013), and prior studies suggest fathers’ employment is a key predictor.  Employed nonresident fathers and those with higher earnings tend to be more highly involved in their children’s lives (Carlson, VanOrman, & Turner, 2017; Ryan, Kalil, & Ziol-Guest, 2008). Yet, the timing of work may also limit fathers’ opportunities for involvement.  Nonresident fathers who work during nonstandard times when children may be most available—especially evenings and weekends—may be less involved compared to fathers who work a standard, daytime shift or those who are not employed. This study tests this hypothesis by examining how fathers’ nonstandard work schedules are related to four dimensions of involvement: father’s accessibility to, engagement with, and responsibility for his child, and father’s monetary contributions to his child. We expect that nonstandard schedules will have different associations with involvement among nonresident versus resident fathers.

Methods

            We use data from an urban, birth cohort study, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study.  The sample includes 1896 resident and 1020 nonresident fathers who participated in the third study wave when children were 3-years-old.  Fathers’ employment schedules were measured as: not employed; worked standard, daytime shift only; worked evenings; worked nights; worked weekends; and worked variable shifts.  Father involvement includes mother-reported measures of the biological father’s: accessibility (i.e., days in past month spent one or more hours with child); engagement (i.e., frequency of father-child activities); responsibility (e.g., how often father takes child places, etc.); and child support (formal, informal, and in-kind support).  We use OLS and probit regression models to estimate associations between work schedules and each dimension of involvement, adjusting for a rich set of covariates including fathers’ total work hours and mothers’ employment schedules. Future analyses will include fixed-effects and lagged dependent variable models.

Results

            Descriptive results show a majority of nonresident (56%) and resident (55%) fathers regularly worked some type of nonstandard shift. Nonresident fathers were less likely to exclusively work a standard shift than resident fathers, but were also more likely to be not employed.  Regression model results show that fathers’ work schedules were associated with involvement among nonresident fathers only. For this group, working evenings or weekends (versus working a standard shift or not employed) was associated with lower levels involvement. For resident fathers only, working more than 40 hours/week was associated with lower levels of involvement (versus not employed). Future analyses will consider associations between work schedules and child support as well as how fathers’ and mothers’ overlap in work schedules relates to father involvement.

Conclusions and Implications

            These findings suggest that nonresident fathers’ evening and weekend work schedules may pose barriers to their involvement with their young children. Interventions for increasing nonresident fathers’ involvement may need to consider whether the timing of work limits fathers’ opportunities to be involved.