2007/02/01 by Lenna Nepomnyaschy · 3 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Developmental psychology #Family Dynamics and Relationships #Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving #Psychology #Reciprocal
paper · doi:10.1353/dem.2007.0008
openalex publication_date 2007/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
I use three waves of panel data to examine the relationship between child support payments and fathers' contact with their nonmarital children. I disaggregate support into fathers' formal and informal payments and incorporate cross-lagged effects models to identify the direction of causality between payments and contact. After including the behavior from the prior wave (lagged term) and a rich set of family characteristics, I find a marginally significant effect of paying formally at Time 1 on the likelihood of contact at Time 2 but no effect of contact at Time 1 on formal payments at Time 2. In the first examination of the relationship between informal support and father-child contact, I find a strong, positive reciprocal relationship between the likelihood and frequency of father-child contact and the likelihood and amount of informal support, with slightly stronger and more consistent effects of contact on payments than of payments on contact.