Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Demography. 2013 Aug;50(4):1421-47. doi: 10.1007/s13524-013-0201-9.
Despite the dramatic rise in U.S. nonmarital childbearing in recent decades, limited attention has been paid to factors affecting nonmarital fatherhood (beyond studies of young fathers). In this article, we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to examine the antecedents of nonmarital fatherhood, as compared to marital fatherhood. Overall, we find the strongest support across both data sets for education and race/ethnicity as key predictors of having a nonmarital first birth, consistent with prior literature about women's nonmarital childbearing and about men's early/teenage fatherhood. Education is inversely related to the risk of nonmarital fatherhood, and minority (especially black) men are much more likely to have a child outside of marriage than white men. We find little evidence that employment predicts nonmarital fertility, although it does strongly (and positively) predict marital fertility. High predicted earnings are also associated with a greater likelihood of marital childbearing but with a lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Given the socioeconomic disadvantage associated with nonmarital fatherhood, this research suggests that nonmarital fatherhood may be an important aspect of growing U.S. inequality and stratification both within and across generations.
尽管美国近年来非婚生子女的比例急剧上升，但人们对影响非婚父亲身份的因素（除了对年轻父亲的研究之外）关注有限。在本文中，我们使用了 2002 年全国家庭增长调查和 1979 年全国青年纵向调查的数据，考察了非婚父亲身份与婚姻父亲身份的前身。总的来说，我们发现这两个数据集都非常支持教育和种族/民族是拥有非婚第一胎的关键预测因素，这与关于女性非婚生子女和男性早婚/未成年父亲的先前文献一致。教育与非婚父亲身份的风险呈负相关，少数民族（尤其是黑人）男性比白人男性更有可能在婚姻之外生育子女。我们几乎没有发现就业可以预测非婚生育的证据，尽管它确实强烈（并积极）地预测了婚姻生育。高预测收入也与更有可能生育婚姻子女相关，但与非婚生育子女的可能性较低相关。鉴于与非婚父亲身份相关的社会经济劣势，这项研究表明，非婚父亲身份可能是美国不平等和代际内部分层不断加剧的一个重要方面。
