Fathers in Children’s Lives

As part of the parent interview, information was collected on whether or not there was a father in the household (e.g., biological, nonbiological, no resident father) and if there was no resident biological father in the household, then information was collected on the amount of contact the biological father had with the child.

When children were about 9 months of age, 1 in 5 (20 percent) lived in households with no father (table 8).
Black children (58 percent) were more likely than White children (10 percent), Hispanic children (20 percent), or Asian children (6 percent) to live in a household with no father present (figure 8, table 8). Forty-five percent of children living below the poverty threshold lived in households with no father present, while 12 percent of children living at or above the poverty threshold lived in households without a father.
In the ECLS-B, in about 99 percent of the interviews, the biological mother was the respondent.11 According to the child's mother, when there was no resident biological father in the household (table 9).

40 percent of young children had contact with their father the same day as the home visit (when the parent interview was conducted);
38 percent of children had contact with their father within 2 to 7 days of the home visit;
7 percent of children had contact with their father within the last 8 to 14 days of the home visit;
2 percent of children had not seen their father in more than 2 weeks; and
13 percent of children had never seen their father.

Of children with no resident father, 6 percent of Black children had nonresident fathers who had never had contact with them, compared to 18 percent of White children, 21 percent of Hispanic children, and 25 percent of Asian children (figure 9, table 9).