Are Fathers Fungible? Patterns of Coresident Adult Men in Maritally Disrupted Families and Young Children's Well-Being

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Abstract
This study addresses the relationship of biological and social fathers to young children's well-being. We outline three general positions in this debate: biological fathers are important to their young children's well-being and are hard to replace; fathers are important, but social fathers can effectively replace biological fathers; fathers are peripheral to young children's lives and do not significantly affect children's well-being. To address this question, we compared children who had differing experiences with coresident adult men, using a sample of 870 children aged 4 to 6 years from the "Children of the NLS/Y" file. Children in five longitudinal patterns of experiences with coresident adult men in maritally disrupted families were identified (No Male, Grandfather, Stepfather, Reunited Father, and Chaotic) and compared to children in intact families. Thirty-one percent of the disrupted children were in the No Male pattern, but more than two-thirds were in one of the other disrupted patterns. Hierarchical regression models found no differences in verbal-intellectual functioning between children in intact families and children in any of the disrupted patterns. For the measure of psychosocial dysfunctioning, only children in the Grandfather pattern were significantly different from children in the Intact pattern. Further analyses revealed that it was white children in this three-generation living arrangement who experienced problems. This study lends some support to the position that fathers, both biological and social, are peripheral to young children's intellectual and psychosocial functioning.

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