This Magic Moment: Predictors of Non-Resident Father Involvement in Parenting

William J. Schneider, Columbia University

Scholars have intermittently focused on the effect of fathers’ prenatal support and presence at birth on later parenting engagement. More recent research by Cabrerra and colleagues (2008) has shown that prenatal involvement is strongly associated with higher levels of paternal parenting engagement, though this work has generally focused on comparing unmarried and married families. In this paper, I focus on the effect of fathers presence in the hospital around the time of birth on later parenting engagement among fathers who were non-resident across all waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. I find that fathers presence in the hospital (nearly 30% of non-resident fathers did not visit the hospital) around the time of birth is strongly predictive of paternal parenting in later waves; these results remain even when controlling for a host of father and mother characteristics, birth histories, relationship quality, new partners, and new births.