Nonresident Father Involvement in Immigrant Families

Lenna Nepomnyaschy, Rutgers University
Louis Donnelly, Rutgers University

Half of children in the US will spend some time in a single-parent family. At the same time, one-fifth of children in the US today live with at least one foreign-born parent. While both of these groups of children are much more likely to be poor, children of foreign-born single parents are also much less likely to receive public assistance. For these children, nonresident fathers’ financial contributions and social involvement may be particularly important. Yet, almost nothing is known about the role of nonresident parents in these children’s lives. This study will use five pooled waves of the CPS-CSS to describe the patterns of nonresident fathers’ financial and social involvement in the lives of children in immigrant families. Patterns and determinants of father involvement will be compared across children with native and foreign-born mothers and across more refined categories within the foreign-born population, such as race/ethnicity and country of origin.