THE CONSEQUENCES OF MULTI-PARTNERED FERTILITY FOR PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND RELATIONSHIPS

At the nexus of changing marital and fertility behavior is a new reality of contemporary family life—the fact that a significant fraction of adults today (will) have biological children by more than one partner, sometimes called ‘multi-partnered fertility.’ In this paper, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to explore the consequences of multi-partnered fertility for family relationships about three years after a baby’s birth. We find that earlier parental obligations are strongly linked to the focal couple’s relationship quality and their ability to co-parent effectively. Fathers’ having previous children is particularly deleterious—at least from mothers’ perspectives. We discuss the implications of our findings for family roles in childrearing, the organization of kin networks, and current public policies.