[ Main Page of Report | Contents of Report ]
Until quite recently, men and fathers were largely missing from statistical portraits of families. Research and data on parenting, fertility, and family formation has focused primarily on women and mothers. In the last several years, however, researchers, policy makers, advocates for fathers, and federal agencies have led the charge for more and better information on the male role in fertility, parenting, and family formation. The result has been several recent ground-breaking efforts, including the production of this report. It provides the public with the first comprehensive portrait of mothers and fathers in America, offering a systematic comparison that will increase our understanding of and appreciation for the contributions of both parents to the raising of our children.
The report draws on thirteen federal and privately collected national surveys to present information on more than 40 measures of parenting, family formation, and fertility in a format that is accessible to broad audiences. It is intended to provide a factual foundation to improve public understanding and policymaking in each of these areas, and to inform federal agencies as they work to improve the breadth, timeliness, and quality of data on fathers and mothers.
The report was produced by Child Trends, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth through better research and improved data collection. The report benefited greatly from the support of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (the Forum), whose member agencies provided some data for the report and carefully reviewed relevant sections. The Forum, formally established in 1997 to foster coordination and collaboration in the collection and reporting of Federal data on children and families, includes 20 federal statistical agencies.
Beginning in 1996 the Forum worked in collaboration with private foundations, including the Ford Foundation, and leading researchers and research centers, sponsoring a year-long series of related conferences and meetings to review current approaches to gathering information on fathers and to explore new ways of conceptualizing, measuring and collecting data about fatherhood and male fertility. Products from these activities included a series of widely disseminated synthesis reports and a comprehensive final report published in March 1998, titled Nurturing Fatherhood: Improving Data and Research on Family Formation and Fatherhood.
The Nurturing Fatherhood report included ten recommendations or "targets of opportunity" for increasing our understanding of male fertility, family formation and fathering, all of which were endorsed by the Forum in February 1998. The second of these ten recommendations was:
To publish a baseline fatherhood indicators report that includes information on male fertility, family formation and fathering.
Child Trends and members of the Forum's Data Collection Committee began work to identify what data were available for such a report, and to assess data quality. Key measures to include in the report were chosen through a consultative process involving members of the NICHD Family and Child Well-Being Research Network (the Network), Child Trends, and members of the Forum. This initial work was supported with funding from the Network and the National Center for Education Statistics.
In 1999 Child Trends was awarded a grant from the Ford Foundation to produce this report. Additional funding and in-kind support was provided by the Forum, the NICHD Family and Child Research Network, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The report presents information on more than 40 indicators in three broad areas: parenting, family formation, and fertility. Each indicator consists of about a page of text beginning with a brief discussion of its importance based on current research, followed by a review of basic trends and population subgroup differences. The text is supported by one or two data figures. More detailed data are presented in tables in the Appendices.
Topics related directly to parenting include attitudes about parenting, parenting practices, qualities of the parent/child relationship, activities with children, child care, parents and schools, and income. Custody arrangements and activities between children and nonresident parents are also covered. The family formation section looks at marriage, divorce and cohabitation experience and attitudes, and at the characteristics of partners. The fertility section includes pregnancy and birth-related outcomes, sexual activity, and contraception.
While the report grew out of a project to portray data about fathers, contributors understood that such information would be more useful in the context of data about mothers as well. The intent of the project was to ensure that both mothers and fathers were brought fully into the parenting picture.
This report is one expression of an ongoing joint effort by private organizations and federal statistical agencies to improve our understanding of fatherhood, and to improve our ability to measure and track key aspects of the parenting, fertility, and family formation experiences of both sexes. Several ongoing efforts are worth mentioning.
Members of the Forum recently held a "Counting Couples" conference to address how federal statistical agencies could improve the way they measures family structure in their surveys and administrative data sources. A report from that conference is scheduled for release at the same time as this report.
Several federal agencies are already making significant changes in their data collection efforts in order to collect additional information on men and fathers. For example, the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), which is repeated about every 6 years, is the nation's premier survey for studying the dynamics of fertility and family formation. Historically the survey has been limited to females. This year, the National Center for Health Statistics, which oversees the survey, is interviewing males as well. They are gathering detailed information on men's fertility history (birth, pregnancies, abortion), sexual activity and contraception, characteristics of current partner, and a variety of parenting activities such as feeding, bathing, diapering, and playing with infants; eating meals together, going to religious services and outings, and helping with homework. This expansion of the NSFG to men, which was funded by a number of agencies within the Forum, represents a major advance in the collection of data on fathers, and should substantially enrich our understanding of fatherhood. If it is sustained in subsequent rounds of the survey, it will allow us to track changes in fathering and male fertility over time and on a regular basis.
The National Center for Education Statistics has also made a substantial effort to collect new data on fathering in the design of its Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. In addition to information obtained from the mother, residential fathers are asked questions about their involvement with the baby. Nonresidential fathers who are in regular contact with the baby are also being given a short questionnaire to complete.
Questions on father involvement are also being collected in the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a major survey funded by several agencies within the Forum.
Over the last five years, the public/private partnerships that have formed around the topic of fatherhood have borne substantial fruit in the form of new research, expanded data collection, and innovative dissemination. Collecting the necessary data is not an inexpensive proposition, however. To secure recent advances and implement further improvements, additional financial resources are required. We believe that this report, and the other efforts described here, demonstrate the value of such an investment for the public and for better policy. They also demonstrate the potential for continued public/private partnerships in this area.
Who is a parent? This answer is not as obvious as one might think. Definitions of parenthood can include genetic, legal, and practical criteria. Throughout this report we do not use any single definition of parenthood. For this indicator, however, we define parenthood in two ways: genetically (have you ever had a biological child), and practically (are you living with your own child under age 18, regardless of the type of relationship). Both measures have their limitations: the genetic definition does not say anything about the current relationship, and is doubtless under-reported for men; the practical definition adopted here leaves out nonresident parents of minor children, an important group. Together, however, they give us a good starting point for the report.
Estimates for the percentage of adults ages 18 and older who have ever had a biological child come from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey (refer to Who is a Parent? Table 1). Estimates of the proportion of adults ages 18 and older who are living with one or more of their own children (under age 18) come from the March 2001 Current Population Survey (refer to Who is a Parent? Table 2).
Figure 1.
Percentage of adults ages 18 and older who have ever had a biological child:
2000
SOURCE: National Health Interview Survey, 2000
| Males | Females | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65 | 74 |
| Race and Hispanic Origin1 | ||
| White non-Hispanic | 65 | 74 |
| Black non-Hispanic | 65 | 76 |
| Hispanic | 68 | 79 |
| Other non-Hispanic | 61 | 69 |
| Poverty Status | ||
| Poor (0 to 99% poverty) | 57 | 77 |
| Extreme Poverty (less than 50%) | 49 | 70 |
| Nonpoor | ||
| 100 to 199% of poverty | 68 | 81 |
| 200 to 299% of poverty | 67 | 78 |
| 300% or more of poverty | 66 | 70 |
| Marital Status | ||
| Currently married | 84 | 85 |
| Not currently married | 36 | 61 |
| Age of Respondent | ||
| 18 to 24 years old | 14 | 31 |
| 25 to 44 years old | 62 | 74 |
| 45 years and older | 84 | 86 |
| Educational Attainment | ||
| Less than high school | 69 | 85 |
| High school diploma or GED | 67 | 81 |
| Vocational/technical or same college | 60 | 70 |
| College graduate | 66 | 62 |
| Employment | ||
| Not working last week | 68 | 82 |
| Less than 35 hours last week | 51 | 71 |
| 35 hours or more last week | 66 | 67 |
| 1.Estimates for all race categories exclude
persons of Hispanic origin. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.
Source: Original analysis by Child Trends of 2000 National Health Interview Survey data |
||
| Males | Females | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 38 | 45 |
| Race and Hispanic Origin1 | ||
| White non-Hispanic | 37 | 41 |
| Black non-Hispanic | 34 | 51 |
| Hispanic | 47 | 61 |
| AsianlPacific Islander | 45 | 53 |
| American Indian/Alaskan Native | 36 | 50 |
| Poverty Status2 | ||
| Poor (0 to 99% poverty) | 34 | 45 |
| Extreme Poverty (at 50% or less) | 31 | 48 |
| Nonpoor | ||
| 100 to 199% of poverty | 37 | 44 |
| 200 to 299% of poverty | 39 | 46 |
| 300% or more of poverty | 38 | 44 |
| Marital Status | ||
| Not currently married | 11 | 29 |
| Currently married | 54 | 56 |
| Age of Respondent | ||
| 18 to 24 years old | 9 | 24 |
| 25 to 44 yearsold | 51 | 68 |
| 45 years and older | 34 | 31 |
| Educational Attainment | ||
| Less than high school | 33 | 44 |
| High school diploma or GED | 38 | 46 |
| Vocational/technical or some college | 36 | 45 |
| College graduate | 42 | 44 |
| Employment | ||
| Not in labor force | 17 | 37 |
| Looking for work | 32 | 53 |
| Less than 35 hours per week | 17 | 49 |
| 35 hours or more per week | 48 | 50 |
| 1.Estimates for all race categories exclude
persons of Hispanic origin. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.
2.Income and poverty status is based on data from the previous year Source: Estimates calculated by Child Trends based on analyses of the 2001 Current Population Survey, March Supplement |
||
By Gender. In 2000 nearly three quarters (74 percent) of all women age 18 and older reported having had at least one biological child in their lifetime, compared to 65 percent among men. Interestingly, this gender gap gets smaller with age, practically disappearing among those ages 45 and older (84 percent for men and 86 percent for women, see Figure 1).
Women are also more likely than men to report living with one or more of their own children under age 18 (45 percent compared to 38 percent in 2001).
By Race and Hispanic Origin. Hispanic women report the highest rates of ever having had a child (79 percent), followed by black, non-Hispanics (76 percent); white, non-Hispanics (74 percent); and other (mostly Asian) non-Hispanics (70 percent). The same pattern exists for men, though the differences are even smaller and generally not statistically significant.
Among males, Hispanics and Asian or Pacific Islanders are most likely to report living with their own children (47 percent and 45 percent, respectively), followed by non-Hispanic, white; non-Hispanic, blacks; and American Indian and Alaskan Natives (at 37, 34, and 36 percent, respectively). Among females, Hispanics are the most likely to live with their own children (61 percent) followed by Asian or Pacific Islanders, non-Hispanic blacks, and American Indians (53, 51, and 50 percent). Non-Hispanic white females were the least likely to report living with their own minor children at 41 percent.
By Marital Status. Married adults are much more likely than single adults to be living with their own minor children, though the percentages differ substantially by gender. Among those who are not married, 11 percent of men and 29 percent of females live with their own child. Among those who are married, 54 percent of men and 56 percent of women live with at least one of their own children.
By Educational Attainment. Men who have graduated from college are more likely to live with one or more of their own children than those who did not graduate from high school (42 percent compared to 33 percent). Women are about equally likely to be living with their own children regardless of education level, with values ranging from 44 percent to 46 percent across education levels.
The patterns are quite different when the measure is whether one has ever had a child. Among women, more education is associated with a lower likelihood of having had a child; 62 percent among college graduates compared to 85 percent for those with less than a high school degree. Among men, rates range from 60 percent to 69 percent, with the lowest rates among those with some college.
Main Page of Report | Contents
of Report
Home Pages:
Human Services Policy
(HSP)
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS)