Marital and Unmarried Births to Men: Complex Patterns of Fatherhood Evidence from the National Survey of Family Growth, 2002

This ASPE research brief suggests that for most men, fatherhood is restricted to marriage. A significant fraction of men, however, have complex fertility patterns including un-married births, but also mixtures of marital, cohabiting, and single births. A man's pattern of births is related to a wide range of social and economic circumstances. Importantly, a man's status at the time his first child is born is very strongly related to his marital status when his other children are born. [12 PDF pages]