“From our initial exploration of the Fragile Families data in Oakland and Austin, three findings stand out. First, parents in fragile families in both cities were highly committed to each other and their child at the time of the birth and had high hopes for their future as a family. The challenge for policymakers and community leaders is to nourish these commitments.

“Second, most unmarried parents in both cities were poorly equipped to support their families. The typical father had an income of less than $12,500 a year, the typical mother only $4,000 to $5,000. *In Oakland, nearly one out of four fathers and two out of five methods had not worked in the previous year. Increases in human capital, employment, and earnings are likely to play critical roles in the success of parents in maintaining stable families.

“Finally, the majority of unmarried mothers and babies in both cities were healthy. But a substantial number received no prenatal health care and engaged in behaviors generally considered risky during pregnancy. One in ten babies were below normal weight. Improving the health care of all mothers during pregnancy and the health education of both parents should be an important objective of policymakers” (11).

“From our initial exploration of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study data from Oakland and Austin, three findings stand out. First, parents in fragile families in both cities are initially highly committed to each other and to their children. Half of unmarried parents live together, and another 30 percent are romantically involved. More than two-thirds expect to marry. Eight of ten fathers provided support during the pregnancy, and mope than eight of ten mothers planned to put the father’s name on the child’s birth certificate. The overwhelming majority of mothers want the father to be involved in raising their child. The challenge for policymakers and community leaders is to nourish rather than undermine these commitments.

“Second, most unmarried parents in both cities are poorly equipped to support their families. The typical fathers has an income of less than $12,500 dollars a year, and the typical mother has only $4,000 to $5,000. The human capital of both parents is low. About half of both mothers and fathers lack a high school degree. Fewer than 20 percent have more than a high school degree. In Oakland, nearly one in four fathers and two in five mothers did not work in the previous year. Increases in human capital, employment, and earnings are likely to play critical roles in the success or failure of parents in maintaining stable families.

“Finally, the majority of unmarried mothers in both cities are healthy and bear healthy children. However, 25 percent of these mothers do not receive parental care in the first trimester and more than 10 percent give birth to low-weight babies. Furthermore, 20 percent of mothers drink alcohol, use drugs, or smoke cigarettes during their pregnancies. Improving the health care of all mothers during pregnancy should be an important objective of local policymakers.”

• This report summarizes what we have learned from our initial analysis of the first wave of data on unmarried parents collected in sixteen cities from April 1998 through November 2000. The national sample consists of 2,670 unmarried couples.
• Unwed parents are committed to each other and to their children at the time of the birth. Eighty-three percent of unmarried parents are romantically involved; 50 percent live together. Seventy-three percent of unmarried mothers say the chances that they will marry the baby's father are "fifty-fifty" or better. Four-fifths of unmarried fathers provide financial or other types of support during the pregnancy, and 84 percent of mothers plan to put the father's name on their child's birth certificate. The overwhelming majority of mothers want the father to be involved in raising their child.
• Although they have high hopes for their families, most unmarried parents are poorly equipped to support themselves and their children. Among those who reported their employment history, 84 percent of mothers and 98 percent of fathers worked at some time during the past year. However, nearly three of ten fathers were out of work in the week prior to the interview. In addition, the human capital of both parents is low: 37 percent of mothers and 34 percent of fathers lack a high school degree, and only 31 percent of mothers and 26 percent of fathers have more than a high school degree. Human capital and earnings are likely to play critical roles in the success or failure of these parents in maintaining stable families. In fact, a majority of respondents felt that steady employment of both partners is "very important" to a successful marriage.
• Most unmarried mothers are healthy and bear healthy children. Two-thirds of mothers report they are in very good or excellent health. However, over one-fifth of mothers do not receive prenatal care in the first trimester, and 11 percent have babies that are born below normal weight. Ten percent of mothers drank alcohol, 6 percent used drugs and 21 percent smoked cigarettes at some time during the pregnancy, according to their self-reports.

Marriage will be an important issue in the upcoming debate over the reauthorization of welfare reform. According to recent studies, both children and adults benefit from mar-rage.

Still, one of three children in the U.S. is born to unmarried parents. At the time of birth, most unmarried parents are committed to each other and to their child and have high hopes of marriage and a future together. But these parents face numerous barriers to creating and maintaining a stable family life, including low education and job skills, lack of jobs, and poor relationship skills. Helping these parents achieve their goal of stability will require new ideas and new policies such as providing services that start at birth; treating the parents as a couple rather than as individuals; offering services that promote communication and increase employability; reducing marriage penalties; and making child support enforcement more reasonable for low-income fathers. While some of these ideas have been tried in the past, others have never been fully implemented, and none has been offered as a single, comprehensive package. Because Congress is unlikely to enact a full package of services, the federal government should consider funding state-run demonstrations to ascertain the benefits and costs of the proposed reforms.

"Unlike their effects on mature families, cash benefits increase the odds of family formation (short of marriage) among fragile families and effective child support enforcement increases the odds of marriage. However, the father’s employment status outweighs the effects of these traditional income security policies on family formation, because it affects outcomes all along the hierarchy, including marriage, and its effects are larger. Unlike previous research, our data on previous fertility enables us to separate the effects of previous children in common from multiple partner fertility on family formation. Both significantly affect family formation (though in opposite directions), but even after including these variables, blacks, who are more likely to bring children from previous unions into a new union, have substantially lower odds of cohabitation and marriage than non-Hispanic whites."

• In most couples, both parents expect to marry the other parent; when they disagree fathers tend to be more optimistic than mothers.
• Couples are more likely to marry and less likely to separate when both partners see the possibility of marriage in the future.
• Consistent with research on cohabitation, men's expectations appear to influence the transition to marriage more than women's.
• However, unmarried parents are more likely to maintain their romantic relationships if either parent expects to marry.

• Controlling for income and need, cohabitating couples have higher levels of hardship than do married couples suggesting that they under invest in household goods.
• Differences appeared to be accounted for by differences in factors related to couples' relationship security--- differences in their past relationship investments as well as the degree of conflict and cooperation in their current relationship. Both of these factors could be expected to affect the continuity of their relationship.
• Once these security factors were included in the analysis, the relationship between cohabitation and hardship became non existent.

• Living in a state with stricter child support enforcement laws does increase the risk of domestic violence among non-cohabitating mothers without a child support order and among mothers on welfare.
• The finding suggests that the stress on the father associated with stricter enforcement regimes and attempts by the father to control the mother’s behavior through intimidation may play a role in increasing violence among mothers who have not yet obtained a child support order and that mothers not on welfare are able to bargain for better treatment. At the same time, this finding could imply that the positive effect of enforcement is only temporary and the risk of violence ma fall once an order is established.
• Because we are unable to separate out the mechanisms more finely, we cannot conclude definitively which pathways are or are not important since it is possible that the effects are canceling each other out.

• In the 12-18 months after a child's birth, having a child with poor health decreases the level of commitment in the parents' relationship.

• Over half of the between-city variation in reliance on TANF is explained by benefit levels, work requirements and whether state lifetime limits had hit
• Most (over 95%) of the variation is within rather than between city
• Individual characteristics continue to play very important roles in determining welfare participation.

• Children's health problems may diminish their families' capacity to invest in their health.

• Having a young child in poor health reduces the fathers' probability of being employed by eight percentage points and that it reduces his work effort by over 5 hours per week.

• Marriage rates among TANF eligible and ineligible mothers are very low and that TANF participation appears to have only a minimal negative effect on marriage among eligible mothers.

• TANF leavers who face sanctions risk high levels of homelessness/eviction, hunger, and financial hardship, and they are more likely than both non-sanctioned leavers and stayers to rely on family or friends for a place to live. These effects persist even after controlling for baseline levels of hardship, numerous individual level characteristics, and state fixed effects.
• Sanctioned leavers are at dramatically high risk for experiencing severe material hardships.
• Sanctioned leavers may also be placing financial burdens on their family and friends by moving in with them.
• Child hunger was six times as prevalent among sanctioned leavers than among non-sanctioned leavers and TANF stayers.
• In the short term, TANF leavers do not appear to be joining the ranks of the middle class.
• The levels of hardship among non-sanctioned leavers, though much lower than those of sanctioned leavers, are nevertheless quite high and are very close to those of TANF stayers.

• Whereas 10 percent of married fathers had spent some time in jail or prison, over 25 percent of fathers who married after birth and over 40 percent of fathers who did not marry had been incarcerated.
• Not only does incarceration reduce the number of men who are available for marriage, the skills that lead to successful coping in jail or prison are likely to be very different from the skills that lead to a successful relationship. Time spent in jail or prison is likely to undermine the skills that the marriage programs are trying to develop.
• Results indicate that recent incarceration policies may influence marriage patterns.
• Increasing relationship skills is likely to have a small, but significant, effect on marriage.
• Changing attitudes toward marriage and resolving the underlying issues behind women's distrust of men would make the effect even larger.
• The data are not definitive about whether new marriage programs will make children better off. On one hand, poverty rates may be lower but marriage may not change parenting quality much.

• Results indicate that married parents are more likely to dissolve their relationships when they were younger, had less education, experienced a high level of conflict in their relationship, and when the father has been abusive to the mother among other factors.
• Qualitative information from a subset of unmarried parents in the study suggests that they delayed marriage when they identified these “warning signs” of divorce in their relationships.
• regression results show that unmarried parents with a high predicted probability of divorce had significantly and substantially lower odds of marriage even after taking other factors strongly related to marriage into account. Based on this evidence, we conclude that unmarried parents delay marriage when they perceive a high risk of divorce.

• There was a positive association between relationship quality and parenting among both married and unmarried couples, underscoring previous research on ‘spillover’ in dyadic family relationships.
• Supportiveness is somewhat more strongly linked to parenting than conflict. There were essentially no observed differences by parental gender, marital status or child sex in how relationship quality affects parenting.