Various Demographic Pretesting Activities

MARCIA J. CARLSON
FRANK F. FURSTENBERG JR.

Columbia University
University of Pennsylvania*

The Prevalence and Correlates of Multipartnered
Fertility Among Urban U.S. Parents

Recent trends in marriage and fertility have
increased the number of adults having children
by more than 1 partner, a phenomenon that we
refer to as multipartnered fertility. This article
uses data from the Fragile Families and Child
Wellbeing Study to examine the prevalence and
correlates of multipartnered fertility among
urban parents of a recent birth cohort (N ¼
4,300). We find that unmarried parents are
much more likely to have had a child by a previous partner than married parents. Also, race/
ethnicity is strongly associated with multipartnered fertility, as is mothers’ young age at first
birth, and fathers’ history of incarceration. To
the extent that childrearing across households
diminishes parental resources, multipartnered
fertility has important consequences for children’s well-being.
Remarkable changes in family demography
occurred in Western industrialized countries during the last half of the 20th century, ushering
in a transformation in a wide range of family
behaviors and practices, especially with respect
to marriage and fertility. At the nexus of these
two major areas of change is a new reality of

Columbia University School of Social Work, 1255 Amsterdam
Avenue, New York, NY 10027 ([email protected]).
*Sociology Department, University of Pennsylvania, 3718
Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Key Words: fertility, fragile families, nonmarital childbearing, parenting.

718

contemporary family demography that has
received only limited attention by researchers
and policymakers alike: The fact that today a significant fraction of adults have (or will have) biological children by more than one partner. We
refer to this phenomenon as multipartnered fertility, building on the previous (unpublished)
research of Furstenberg and King (1999) and
Mincy (2002). We provide a theoretical and
descriptive overview about multipartnered fertility in the United States today using data from
the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing
Study. In future work, we will explore the consequences of multipartnered fertility for children, families, and society using new
longitudinal data as they become available.
BACKGROUND
Given the historical centrality of marriage to family relationships and reproduction, changes in
marriage patterns necessarily have powerful implications for social life. Since the 1950s, marriage has become less central in the life course
as individuals are marrying later and divorcing
more often and as unmarried cohabitation has
arisen as a precursor to—and for some couples
a substitute for—legal marriage (Moynihan,
Smeeding, & Rainwater, 2004; Wu & Wolfe,
2001). Moreover, public opinion data indicate
a greater social acceptance of these nonmarital
behaviors (Axinn & Thornton, 2000) and that
marriage is today viewed as a less important transition in early adulthood (Furstenberg, Kennedy,
McLoyd, Rumbaut, & Settersten, 2004); at the

Journal of Marriage and Family 68 (August 2006): 718–732

Multipartnered Fertility
same time, marriage has retained important symbolic value in American culture (Cherlin, 2004;
Edin & Kefalas, 2005).
Alongside the changes in marriage, large-scale
changes in attitudes and behaviors related to fertility have also occurred. Improvements in contraceptive technology and the availability of
abortion have increased women’s control over
their own fertility at the same time that the cultural prohibition on sexual activity outside of
marriage has lessened. With increased sex outside of marriage, women are at greater risk of getting pregnant and having a nonmarital birth. The
nonmarital birth rate has increased dramatically
between 1940 and 2004, from only 4% in 1940
to nearly 36% today (Hamilton, Ventura, Martin,
& Sutton, 2005; Ventura & Bachrach, 2000).
Further, declines in the so-called ‘‘shotgun marriages’’ (those that occur between the conception
and the time of birth) have contributed to the increases in nonmarital childbearing (Akerlof,
Yellen, & Katz, 1996; Ventura & Bachrach).
Taken together, these changes in nuptiality and
fertility practices imply that a decreasing proportion of families at any given time include married
parents coresiding with only their joint biological
children, that a growing number of parents are
rearing children across multiple households,
and that an increasing share of children have
kin relations that include a stepparent, stepsibling, and/or half sibling. The family forms
emerging from the recent trends in marriage and
childbearing, variably described in the literature
as ‘‘divorce and remarriage chains,’’ ‘‘complex
households,’’ or ‘‘the new extended family’’
(Bohannan, 1968; Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994;
Furstenberg, 1987; Johnson, 1988), are likely to
continue to rise in the future, particularly for
African Americans whose marriage rates are
substantially lower—and nonmarital birth rates
higher—than for the population as a whole.
Children stand to lose parental resources in
the context of high rates of multipartnered
fertility. Furstenberg and his colleagues suggest
that fathers’ allegiances shift when they leave
one family and move on to assume family obligations with a new partner (Furstenberg, 1995;
Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991; Furstenberg &
Harris, 1992). Indeed, empirical evidence demonstrates that fathers visit nonresident children
less frequently (Manning & Smock, 1999) and
provide less economic support (Manning &
Smock, 2000) when they have new coresident
biological children. Further, couples who have

719
a child outside of marriage are less likely to
cohabit or marry following the baby’s birth if the
father (but not the mother) already has children
by a previous partner (Carlson, McLanahan, &
England, 2004). Therefore, multipartnered fertility (at least by fathers) appears to affect children’s
access to their parents’ resources (both time and
money) and union stability beyond the effects resulting from family structure alone. Given the
importance of family relationships for children’s
healthy development, these circumstances portend that children reared in the context of multipartnered fertility may be at greater risk of
adverse outcomes. Yet, until recently, existing
data sources provided virtually no information
about families formed by childbearing with multiple partners.
We use new data from the Fragile Families and
Child Wellbeing Study to examine multipartnered fertility and its correlates among the parents
of a recent urban birth cohort in the United States.
Given that our data are primarily cross-sectional,
we emphasize the descriptive nature of our analyses, and we draw no inferences about causal relationships among our variables. First, we present
frequencies on the level of multipartnered fertility
for mothers and fathers. Then, we estimate multivariate regression models to examine the associations of various individual characteristics and
couple relationship status with multipartnered
fertility. Finally, we discuss the implications of
our findings for future research and public policy.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
To our knowledge, with the exception of a handful of mostly unpublished papers (summarized
below), no research in the social sciences has
explicitly focused on the level and correlates of
multipartnered fertility. Furstenberg and King
(1999) examined multipartnered fertility among
a sample of low-income teenage mothers in Baltimore; they found that about half of mothers in
this disadvantaged sample had births by at least
two men but that these patterns were not replicated among the next generation. Mincy (2002),
using an early subsample of the Fragile Families Study, explored the bivariate relationships
between multipartnered fertility and parents’
age, race/ethnicity, and family structure at the
time of their baby’s birth; he found that over
a third of mothers and fathers have had children
by more than one partner and that rates were
higher among parents who were older, Black, or

720
unmarried. Harknett and Knab (in press) have
shown reduced social support in kin networks
among couples who have children by other partners in the Fragile Families Study. Gibson-Davis
and Edin (2004), using the qualitative data from
the Fragile Families Study, found that multipartnered fertility did not reduce fathers’ support
toward the focal child, but it was often a source
of tension in the couple relationship. Meyer,
Cancian, and Cook (2005) found that, among
a sample of mothers receiving cash welfare benefits in Wisconsin, about three fourths had
children by more than one father, creating challenges for the effective collection of child support. Guzzo and Furstenberg (2005) examined
multipartnered fertility among women aged
19 – 25 using data from the National Longitudinal
Study of Adolescent Health; they found that the
overall frequency is low in this young age group,
but there are important differences by the race/
ethnicity and by the relationship with the focal
child’s father. Taken together, these studies
suggest that multipartnered fertility is not uncommon, at least within particular U.S. subpopulations, and that this phenomenon has important
implications for family and child well-being.
To the extent that multipartnered fertility results from the disjuncture between union stability
and fertility, studies about the factors associated
with union formation or dissolution and with
childbearing behaviors can shed light on potential correlates of multipartnered fertility. We
briefly discuss four categories of variables about
parents that may be related to the decisions and
actions about partnering and fertility over time
and hence may be associated with multipartnered
fertility: individual demographic characteristics,
economic capacities, social-psychological characteristics, and couple relationship status.
Demographic characteristics. Early childbearing
increases the likelihood of multipartnered fertility because starting earlier yields greater time at
risk of subsequent childbearing and hence higher
completed fertility (Morgan & Rindfuss, 1999).
Race/ethnicity is linked to family formation, as
African Americans are more likely to have children as teenagers than either Whites or Hispanics
(Hanson, Morrison, & Ginsburg, 1989; Lerman,
1993) and are less likely to marry (Lichter,
LeClere, & McLaughlin, 1991). Youth who live
with both biological parents throughout childhood are less likely to have a child as a teenager

Journal of Marriage and Family
(McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994) and less likely
to marry (South, 2001).
Economic capacities. Educational achievement
and aspirations are negatively associated with
early childbearing (Plotnick, 1992; Rindfuss,
Morgan, & Offutt, 1996; Thornberry, Smith, &
Howard, 1997). Further, highly educated individuals are more likely to marry (Goldstein & Kenney,
2001), whereas those with lower education are
more likely to cohabit, more likely to marry at
earlier ages if they do marry, and more likely to
divorce, compared to individuals with higher
education (Martin & Bumpass, 1989; Raley,
2000). Employment (at least by men) is positively associated with marriage (Lichter et al.,
1991; Manning & Smock, 1995), and individuals
in better physical health are more likely to marry
(Lillard & Panis, 1996).
Social-psychological characteristics. Individual
attitudes, values, and personal characteristics also
have an important influence on family formation
behaviors. Religious beliefs and participation
(especially among conservative Protestants)
generally encourage marriage and discourage
cohabitation and childbearing outside marriage
(Lehrer, 2000; Wilcox, 2002). Drug or alcohol
abuse and infidelity within marriage are strongly
associated with low marital quality and divorce
(Amato & Rogers, 1997; Sayer & Bianchi,
2000; White, 1990). Fathers who have been
incarcerated are much less likely to be cohabiting
or married about a year after their baby’s birth
(Western, Lopoo, & McLanahan, 2004).
Relationship status. Marital unions are typically
of longer duration than cohabiting unions and
are more likely to include childbearing (Bumpass
& Lu, 2000; Manning, 1995). A recent analysis of
young adults indicated that individuals who
marry are both more likely to have additional
children and to confine their children to a single
partnership (Guzzo & Furstenberg, 2005).
METHOD
Data
We use data from the Fragile Families and Child
Wellbeing Study, a national longitudinal study,
designed to examine the characteristics of unmarried parents, the relationships between them, and
the consequences for children (see Reichman,

Multipartnered Fertility
Teitler, Garfinkel, & McLanahan, 2001, for information on study design). The study follows a birth
cohort of 3,712 children born to unmarried
parents and, less well known, also includes a
comparison group of 1,186 children born to married parents—in 20 large U.S. cities. The sample,
when weighted, is representative of all nonmarital births to parents residing in cities with populations over 200,000 and nearly representative of
births to married parents in large cities (because
the sampling frame was designed around unmarried births). (Analyses of 1999 Vital Statistics
data show that the age and educational distributions of suburban births are very similar to those
of urban births for both married and unmarried
mothers; only the racial composition is different,
with a greater share of suburban births occurring
to White non-Hispanic mothers [Bulle, 2005].)
Baseline interviews with mothers and fathers
were conducted shortly after their child’s birth.
Mothers were interviewed in person in the hospital within 48 hours of the birth, and fathers were
interviewed in person as soon as possible thereafter, either in the hospital or wherever they could
be located. Follow-up interviews with both mothers and fathers occur when the child is about 1, 3,
and 5 years old. Response rates for the baseline
survey are 87% for unmarried mothers and 82%
for married mothers. Fathers were also interviewed in 88% of cases of married fathers and
75% of unmarried fathers. The Fragile Families
data are most representative of cohabiting fathers
(90% response rate) and least representative of
fathers who are not romantically involved with
the child’s mother at the time of birth (38%
response rate). Moreover, among the latter group,
the men who participated in this study are likely
to be a highly select group of men, namely, men
who are unusually committed to the child and/
or to the mother. At the 1-year follow-up, 90%
of unmarried mothers, 91% of married mothers,
70% of unmarried fathers, and 82% of married fathers who were eligible (had a completed baseline
mother interview) were interviewed.
In this article, we use data from the baseline
interviews with mothers and fathers and from the
1-year follow-up survey with mothers. Our sample includes 4,300 couples about which we have
valid indicators of their previous fertility (fewer
cases are shown in particular tables, depending
on missing data). The Fragile Families Study is
a sample of births, so our results can be generalized to the parents of this cohort of children born
in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. From

721
the child’s perspective, the figures shown represent the initial family configuration into which
they are born, but over the course of childhood, they may experience one or both of their
parents having additional children by subsequent
partners. Therefore, the total prevalence of multipartnered fertility for this population is underestimated here and will only increase over time
because (most) parents are not at the end of their
reproductive years.
Unlike many studies using the Fragile Families
data, we combine the unmarried and married
samples (and apply weights for the descriptive
statistics to adjust for the oversampling of nonmarital births) to yield a large national sample
of urban births. Information about the (weighted)
sample, overall and by multipartnered fertility
status, is shown in Table A1; there are notable
differences in parents’ demographic, economic,
and social-psychological characteristics across
categories of multipartnered fertility. Overall,
the weighted sample is racially diverse: 39% of
mothers are White non-Hispanic, 22% are Black
non-Hispanic, 31% are Hispanic, and 8% are of
another race. Nearly one fourth of both mothers
and fathers were born outside the United States.
Twenty-two percent of mothers had their first
child as a teenager (age 18 or younger), 16% at
ages 19 – 20, 43% in their 20s, and 19% at age
30 or older. About 27% (24%) of mothers
(fathers) have less than a high school education,
30% (28%) have a high school degree, 19%
(24%) attended some college, and 24% (23%)
have a college degree or higher.
Measures
The Fragile Families Survey does not include
a complete fertility history for either mothers or
fathers, so we use several indicators of parents’
previous childbearing from the 1-year survey to
determine multipartnered fertility. We use mothers’ reports about both parents’ fertility to preserve a larger sample because (as noted above)
a smaller fraction of fathers were interviewed.
With respect to their own fertility, each mother reports whether she has any children by other men
and if so, by how many fathers. With respect to
the father’s fertility, the mother reports whether
he has any children by another woman. (For cases
where both the mother and the father were interviewed at 1 year, 90% of couples agree about
whether the father has a child by someone else.
[The fathers are asked a related but different

722
question: Whether they have biological children
living elsewhere.] Of the 10% of cases with
discrepant reports, two thirds are where the
mother reports the father has another child
and the father reports none, and one third is where
the father reports children living elsewhere but
the mother says the father has no children by
another partner.)
Our independent variables include individual
characteristics about mothers and fathers, all reported at the baseline survey unless otherwise
indicated. We use mothers’ reports about fathers
for several variables where available (age, race/
ethnicity, education, employment status, incarceration history) in order to have information
about the full sample of fathers. These secondhand reports could be less reliable than selfreported measures, but we find that agreement
is high in the father-interviewed sample where
we can compare mother and father reports. (Reported age is correlated at r ¼ .98, and parents
provide identical responses in the majority
of cases for the other variables: 95% for race/
ethnicity, 77% for education, 88% for employment, and 83% for incarceration.)
Mother’s age at first birth is calculated from her
report about the ages of children living with her at
the time of the 1-year survey from the household
roster because we do not have a direct report of
her age at first birth. By this measure, we could
be overestimating the age at first birth for mothers
who have previous children who do not live with
them. Because children typically live with mothers, we suspect this is not a significant problem.
(Separate analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1988 wave [N ¼
4,840], when the mothers were in their 20s as
are the majority of Fragile Families mothers,
indicated that this approach is reasonable. The
mean estimated age at first birth is only .74
years different from the mean actual age at first
birth, and the estimated is within 1 year of the
actual for 92.5% of cases.) We include a variable
for the total number of births the mother has
ever had (parity) from the 1-year survey. (Information about fathers’ age at first birth or total
number of births is not available.) We include
fathers’ age at the time of the focal child’s birth:
younger than 20, ages 20 – 24, ages 25 – 29,
and age 30 and older (reference). We measure
current age for mothers as a single dummy for
age 21 or older (as the continuous measure
would be highly correlated with age at first
birth).

Journal of Marriage and Family
Family structure history is represented by
a dichotomy for whether each parent reported
having lived with both of their parents at age
15. Parents’ race/ethnicity is specified as a series
of dummy variables: Black non-Hispanic (reference), White non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and other
non-Hispanic race. A separate dummy variable
reflects when the parents differ on race/ethnicity.
Parents’ immigrant status is represented by
a dummy variable for whether each was foreign
born. Parents’ education is specified as less than
high school, high school degree or General
Educational Development (GED) (reference),
some college, or bachelor’s degree. We include
a dummy variable for each parent’s employment
status; for mothers, it is whether they worked
in the year prior to their baby’s birth, and for
fathers, it is mothers’ report about whether the
father was working in the week prior to the baseline survey. (As the mothers had just given birth,
few if any of them would have worked in the
week before the survey.) We represent each
parent’s health status by a dummy variable for
whether their self-reported health was poor or fair.
We measure the frequency of each parent’s
religious attendance as a continuous variable,
ranging from 1 ¼ not at all to 5 ¼ once a week
or more. Parents’ distrust of the opposite gender
is represented by their responses to two statements: (a) ‘‘Men (women) cannot be trusted to
be faithful’’ and (b) ‘‘In a dating relationship,
a man (woman) is largely out to take advantage
of a woman (man).’’ Response choices range
from 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 4 ¼ strongly
agree, and the two items are averaged into a single measure. Mothers and fathers report about
their own substance problems by responding
(yes/no) to the question ‘‘In the past year, has
drinking or using drugs ever interfered with
your work on a job or with your personal relationships?’’ We include self-reports about
whether each parent thought about getting an
abortion before the focal child’s birth (an imperfect proxy for whether the focal birth was
intended). For fathers, we add a dummy variable
indicating that the mother reports that he ever
spent time in jail or prison (from the 1-year survey). Finally, we include variables to represent
parents’ relationship status at the time of the
focal child’s birth. Compared to the reference
group of married parents, unmarried parents are
categorized as cohabiting, visiting (romantically
involved but living separately), or not romantically involved at the time of the baby’s birth.

Multipartnered Fertility
Analytic Approach
First, we present frequencies on the level of multipartnered fertility for mothers (by number of
births, by number of fathers) followed by frequencies on multipartnered fertility among couples (overall and by marital status). For all of
our descriptive analyses, we focus on the
weighted frequencies, which adjust for marital
status, age, race, and education, but we also show
the unweighted frequencies and sample sizes to
provide more complete information about the
data. For our multivariate analyses, we estimate
logistic regression models for mothers’ and
fathers’ multipartnered fertility, respectively,
using unweighted data (because we include the
variables for which the weights adjust) to preserve the full sample; replication of the estimates
with weighted data yields similar findings. Given
the descriptive nature of the work, we include all
mothers (fathers) in the analyses, even those
who have had only one birth and hence are not
at risk of multipartnered fertility, and we include
all independent variables simultaneously.
We use several procedures for dealing with
missing data. Among items reported by mothers,
for any variables with more than 10 missing
observations, we assign the missing cases to the
overall mean and include a flag variable to indicate the case has missing data on a particular variable. For father-reported variables, we follow
a similar procedure and we include a dummy to
indicate that the father was missing on a particular
variable (when he was interviewed). We include
an additional dummy variable to indicate if the
father did not participate in the baseline survey,
and we assigned values on the substantive variables to the means. This approach allows us to use
the full sample, but only cases with valid information affect the regression estimates on particular
variables. (The results are nearly identical when
we limit our analyses to complete cases [results
not shown].)
BIVARIATE RESULTS
We begin by looking at the fertility of all mothers
in the Fragile Families Survey because we have
more detailed information about mothers than
fathers. These figures can also be seen from the
child’s perspective, as they reflect the parental
configurations into which a recent cohort of children is born. Table 1 describes the fertility of
4,209 mothers by total number of births (parity),

723
and within such by the number of fathers of their
children. For 39% of mothers, the Fragile Families focal child is their first birth. For another
38% of mothers across higher order births, all
their children have been with the same father.
Thus, altogether, about three fourths of women
have had children by a single man (although in
time, many of these women may go on to have
children by subsequent partners). Of the remaining one quarter of women who had children by
more than one partner, the vast majority (84%)
had children by two fathers, 15% by three fathers,
and less than 2% by four or more fathers. As
would be expected, at higher parities, a greater
share of mothers have had children by multiple
partners: 24% of mothers with two births, 48%
of three births, 47% of four births, and 72% of five
or more births. These figures indicate that large
family size is confounded with multipartnered
fertility, a fact that has not been highlighted in
the vast demographic literature on fertility and
family size.
Table 2 shows frequencies on couples’ multipartnered fertility, overall and by marital status.
When we take account of fathers’ fertility (in
addition to mothers’), the fraction of all couples
with no other parental partners (either first births
or where all previous children were with each
other) drops to 64%. Thus, for over a third of couples who have recently had a child together, one
or both of the partners has a previous child by
another partner; for 14% of all couples, only the
father has a child by another parent; for 12%, only
the mother has a child by another parent, and for
the remaining 11%, both the mother and the
father have one or more children by another
partner.
Multipartnered fertility varies notably by marital status: Unmarried couples are much more
likely to have children from a previous relationship. In fact, in the majority of unmarried
couples—59%—one or both parents already
have at least one child by another partner; in
22% of cases, only the father has another child;
in 17%, only the mother has a previous child; in
the remaining 20% of cases, both the mother
and the father have children by a previous partner. The proportions are much lower among
couples who are married at the time of their
baby’s birth. Overall, in 21% of married couples,
either one or both partners has children by another
partner (8% the father only, 8% the mother only,
and 5% both). This difference in multipartnered
fertility by marital status is even more striking in

Journal of Marriage and Family

724

Table 1. Distribution of Mothers by Total Number of Births (Parity) and of Fathers

All (N)
One birth
Two births
One father
Two fathers
Three births
One father
Two fathers
Three fathers
Four births
One father
Two fathers
Three fathers
Four fathers
Five or more births
One father
Two fathers
Three fathers
Four fathers
Five fathers
Six or more fathers

Weighted %
of Sample

Weighted %
of Each Parity

Unweighted %
of Sample

Unweighted
Number of Cases

100.0
39.4
32.0
24.2
7.8
17.8
9.2
7.0
1.5
5.8
3.1
1.8
0.9
0.1
5.0
1.4
2.4
0.9
0.2
0.1
0.0

100.0
100.0
75.7
24.4
100.0
51.9
39.5
8.6
100.0
52.7
31.2
14.9
1.2
100.0
28.5
47.4
18.5
3.9
1.7
0.0

100.0
37.7
33.5
18.8
14.7
16.1
6.0
7.7
2.4
7.3
2.1
3.1
1.6
0.4
5.4
1.0
2.3
1.3
0.5
0.3
0.0

4,209
1,588
1,409
790
619
677
254
323
100
306
89
132
68
17
229
41
98
53
22
13
2

Note: Although 4,300 mothers provided information about whether they had children by another partner, only 4,209
reported about the number of partners. Thus, we use the latter as the total sample size here.

light of the fact that married mothers and fathers
in the sample are, on average, 5 – 6 years older
than their unmarried counterparts.
MULTIVARIATE RESULTS
As noted in the Method section, we estimate
logistic regression models for whether the mother
and whether the father has children by a previous
partner, respectively. The reader should note that
odds ratios, exp(b), are presented for ease of
interpretation; an odds ratio equal to exactly 1.0
indicates that a given independent variable has
no association with a given dependent variable,
and an odds ratio higher (lower) than 1.0 indicates that a given independent variable has
a positive (negative) association with the dependent variable.
Table 3 shows results predicting the mother’s
having children by more than one partner. Mother’s age at first birth is highly predictive of having
children by more than one partner even controlling for her total number of births: Mothers whose
first birth was as a young teen (ages 14 – 16) are
nearly six times as likely, and ages 17 – 18 are

more than twice as likely, to have had children
by multiple fathers, compared to mothers who delayed childbearing until the age of 30 or older.
These findings replicate the previous results of
Furstenberg and King (1999) using a sample of
teen mothers. Mothers’ total number of births is
positively related to multipartnered fertility: Each
additional birth is linked with a 3.5-fold increase
in the odds that the mother has had children by at
least two different men. Older mothers are more
likely to have had births by more than one partner; they have simply had more time in which
to experience childbearing and/or relationship
instability. Mothers who lived with both of their
biological parents at age 15 are nearly one fifth
less likely to have had children by more than
one father. Race/ethnicity is strongly linked
to multipartnered fertility: Black non-Hispanic
mothers are significantly more likely than mothers of all other race/ethnic backgrounds to have
had children by more than one father. Couples
who differ on race/ethnicity are more likely
to have had children by multiple fathers (44%
of mixed-race couples compared to 34% of
same-race couples); also, in 40% of mixed-race

Multipartnered Fertility

725

Table 2. Couples’ Multipartnered Fertility by Marital Status at Time of Birth

a

All couples (N)
No other partners
Father MPF only
Mother MPF only
Both parents MPF
Unmarried couples
No other partners
Father MPF only
Mother MPF only
Both parents MPF
Married couples
No other partners
Father MPF only
Mother MPF only
Both parents MPF

Weighted %
of (Sub) Sample

Unweighted %
of (Sub) Sample

Unweighted
Number of Cases

100.0
63.8
13.6
11.6
11.1
100.0
41.1
22.0
16.8
20.1
100.0
78.6
8.1
8.1
5.2

100.0
46.8
17.9
16.3
19.0
100.0
37.7
20.3
18.8
23.2
100.0
73.3
10.9
9.0
6.8

4,160
1,946
744
678
792
3,099
1,168
628
583
720
1,061
778
116
95
72

Note: MPF ¼ multipartnered fertility.
a
Includes couples where both mother and father have valid fertility information.

couples, the mother or the father is Black nonHispanic, and these couples are nearly twice as
likely to have had multipartnered fertility than
mixed-race couples where neither partner is
Black non-Hispanic (results not shown).
Turning to mothers’ economic capacities, education is not significantly related to having had
children by more than one partner net of the other
covariates. Mothers who worked in the year
before their baby’s birth are more likely to have
children by two or more fathers; they could be employed in order to support their earlier children.
Self-reported health status does not appear to be
associated with mothers’ multipartnered fertility.
With respect to social-psychological attributes, more religious mothers are less likely to
have had a child by more than one partner. Distrust of men and having a substance problem
are positively correlated with multipartnered fertility, but the estimates are outside acceptable levels of statistical significance (p ¼ .13 and p ¼
.11, respectively). Having thought about getting
an abortion with respect to the focal child is significantly related to mothers’ having had children by multiple partners.
Parents’ relationship status at the time of their
baby’s birth is strongly linked to multipartnered
fertility. Compared to married mothers, all three
categories of unmarried mothers (cohabiting, visiting, and nonromantic) are much more likely to
have borne children by more than one man. Cer-

tainly, marital status may be a consequence of
partners’ fertility history, as relationships complicated by offspring from previous partnerships
may be less likely to have progressed to marriage
before the focal child’s birth.
Next, we examine the correlates of fathers’
having children by more than one partner
(Table 4). Fathers’ age at the time of the focal
baby’s birth is positively related to having had
a child by more than one partner. Men who lived
with both biological parents at age 15 are less
likely to have had a child by more than one partner. Similar to mothers, Black non-Hispanic men
are much more likely to have had a child by
another partner than men of all other race/ethnic
backgrounds. Immigrant fathers, however, are
less likely to have done such.
With respect to fathers’ economic capacities,
we find that men with a college degree are two
thirds less likely to have had children by a previous partner. Employment status is not linked to
multipartnered fertility, but men in fair/poor
health are significantly more likely to have had
children by more than one partner. Religiosity,
distrust of women, and having a substance problem are not linked to multipartnered fertility for
men. Fathers with some history of incarceration,
however, are more than twice as likely to have
had children by two or more partners. Fathers who
thought about having an abortion—a crude proxy
for whether the pregnancy was intended—are

Journal of Marriage and Family

726
Table 3. Logistic Regressions Results: Mothers’
Multipartnered Fertility

Table 4. Logistic Regressions Results: Fathers’
Multipartnered Fertility

Odds Ratio (z)
Mother’s demographic characteristics
Age at first birth (reference ¼
30 and older)
14 – 16
5.99** (7.20)
17 – 18
2.30** (4.06)
19 – 20
1.31
(1.39)
21 – 24
1.08
(.38)
25 – 29
.80 (
1.08)
Total number of births (parity)
3.47** (23.75)
Aged 21 or older (at 1-year survey)
4.68** (9.63)
Lived with both parents at age 15
.82* (
2.12)
Race/ethnicity (reference ¼
Black non-Hispanic)
White non-Hispanic
.72* (
2.47)
Hispanic
.62** (
4.08)
Other
.44** (
2.73)
Parents are of different race/ethnicity
1.36* (2.31)
Immigrant
.99
(
.07)
Mother’s economic capacities
Education (reference ¼ high
school degree)
Less than high school
.88 (
1.11)
Some college
1.10
(.81)
Bachelor’s degree or higher
.74 (
1.41)
Worked last year
1.28* (2.13)
Health is fair/poor
1.05
(.32)
Mother’s social-psychological
characteristics
Frequency of religious attendance
.93* (
2.03)
(range ¼ 1 – 5)
Distrust of men (range ¼ 1 – 4)
1.13
(1.53)
Substance problem
1.53
(1.59)
Thought about an abortion
1.22* (1.97)
Couple’s relationship status at baby’s
birth (reference ¼ married)
Cohabiting
4.01** (9.90)
Visiting
4.87** (10.24)
Not romantic
5.62** (9.64)
2
v (30 df)
2047.63
Unweighted number of cases (N)
4,161
yp , .10. *p , .05. **p , .01.

also more likely to have children by multiple
partners.
The parents’ relationship at the time of birth is
again important: Compared to married fathers, all
three types of unmarried fathers are much more
likely to have had children by more than one partner (ranging from twice as likely for cohabiting

Odds Ratio (z)
Father’s demographic characteristics
Age at baby’s birth (reference ¼
30 and older)
Younger than 20
.06** (
15.82)
20 – 24
.17** (
16.98)
25 – 29
.48** (
7.36)
Lived with both parents at age 15
.75** (
3.18)
Race/ethnicity (ref ¼ Black
non-Hispanic)
White non-Hispanic
.40** (
7.74)
Hispanic
.64** (
4.52)
Other
.54** (
2.70)
Parents are of different race/ethnicity
1.02
(.20)
Immigrant
.65** (
3.16)
Father’s economic capacities
Education (reference ¼ high
school degree)
Less than high school
1.07
(.68)
Some college
.92
(
.80)
Bachelor’s degree or higher
.33** (
6.26)
Worked last week
.89
(
1.11)
Health is fair/poor
1.44*
(2.35)
Father’s social-psychological
characteristics
Frequency of religious
.98
(
.62)
attendance (range ¼ 1 – 5)
Distrust of women (range ¼ 1 – 4)
.99
(
.11)
Substance problem
1.01
(.05)
Ever in jail (mother report)
2.21** (9.03)
Thought about an abortion
1.37** (2.89)
Couple’s relationship status at
baby’s birth (reference ¼ married)
Cohabiting
2.38** (7.54)
Visiting
2.99** (8.50)
Not romantic
4.71** (9.57)
Father not interviewed at baseline
.57
(
0.85)
2
v (34 df)
1135.13
Unweighted number of cases (N)
4,136
yp , .10. *p , .05. **p , .01.

fathers to nearly five times as likely for men
who had no romantic relationship with the baby’s
mother at the time of the birth). There is no significant difference in multipartnered fertility
between fathers who did versus did not participate in the baseline survey.
We also estimated regression models for
father’s multipartnered fertility using fathers’ own
reports of their fertility (results not shown). This

Multipartnered Fertility
limits our sample to those fathers who were interviewed. Our findings are extremely similar to
those using mothers’ reports, except that there are
no significant differences for other non-Hispanic
fathers (non-White, non-Black) versus Black
non-Hispanic fathers. Also, when fathers’ reports are used, there is no significant association
of fathers’ fair/poor health or father having
thought about an abortion with multipartnered
fertility.
DISCUSSION
These results provide new descriptive information about multipartnered fertility, which is the
long-term consequence of the changes in family
demography in recent decades that have weakened the link between marriage and parenthood.
Today, children experience a diverse array of
family configurations: Nearly 36% of all children
are born outside of marriage (Hamilton et al.,
2005), and half of all children will spend some
time in a single-parent family, often followed
by remarriage or cohabitation (Bumpass &
Raley, 1995). These figures suggest that a substantial fraction of all children will spend some
time living away from one of their biological parents and possibly living with a nonbiological
parent figure (either a legal stepparent or the cohabiting partner of one of their biological parents)
along with step-siblings or half siblings.
Historically, parents’ legal and biological ties
to children came together in what anthropologists
and sociologists called the ‘‘isolated nuclear family,’’ where married parents shared a household
with their own children (Davis, 1949; Parsons,
1955; Popenoe, 1988; Stacey, 1990). The diminishing congruence between families and households creates ambiguities in familial norms and
roles and competing expectations and obligations
(Furstenberg & King, 1999; Schneider, 1980).
Parents are increasingly rearing children across
multiple households and must make difficult
choices about how to allocate their time, resources, and emotion; in all likelihood, such circumstances diffuse the total level of parental
investment that children will receive.
This representative sample of a recent birth
cohort in large U.S. cities sheds light on the families into which children are born, providing
information about the characteristics of parents
who have had children by more than one partner.
Consistent with Furstenberg and King (1999),
mothers who have a first child at early ages are

727
more likely to have children by more than one
partner. The relationship between young age at
first birth and multipartnered fertility persists
even controlling for the mother’s total number
of births. This relation implies that it is not only
that mothers who start early have greater years
at risk of childbearing. Instead, having a first
child as a teenager is either associated with other
individual characteristics that foster instability in
relationships (such as emotional immaturity) or
the experience of teen childbearing itself and
the associated stresses diminish women’s ability
to manage their subsequent relationships and
fertility—or both. From a demographic perspective, the strong link between parity and multipartnered fertility is notable because it suggests that
greater sibship size is often consonant with children in a given family not all sharing the same
two biological parents.
One of the most striking results from the present research concerns the significant association
between race/ethnicity and multipartnered fertility, even controlling for various individual characteristics of parents (including for mothers,
their total number of births). Black non-Hispanic
mothers and fathers are much more likely than parents of other race/ethnic backgrounds to have
had children by more than one partner. This finding underscores research that has pointed to the
unique nature of family formation and kin relationships among African Americans (Mincy &
Pouncy, 1997; Patterson, 1998; Stack, 1974;
Wilson, 1987). Some have argued that certain
cultural aspects of marriage and family among
Blacks are attributable to larger historical/institutional experiences such as slavery (Patterson),
whereas others contend that any differences in
family patterns by race simply reflect the low
socioeconomic status and poor job prospects
among African American men (Tucker, 2000;
Wilson)—and/or the high level of gender distrust
(Edin, 2000; Furstenberg, 2001)—both of which
deter marriage among inner-city Blacks.
Another notable finding is that fathers’ incarceration is strongly related to multipartnered fertility, even controlling for a host of other
correlates: Fathers who have spent time in jail
or prison are more than twice as likely to have
had a child by another partner. This finding is
consistent with research showing that incarceration has negative consequences for union formation and family cohesion (Western et al., 2004).
Incarceration history may be a proxy for other
attributes of men that predict unstable partnerships

728
and/or the experience of spending time in jail or
prison may increase the chances that an existing
partnership will dissolve, hence increasing men’s
availability for new partnerships. We suspect
that both are operative and could be mutually
reinforcing.
Overall, the factors most strongly correlated
with multipartnered fertility (of those measured
for both mothers and fathers)—race/ethnicity
and relationship status—are the same for men
and women, but we do find several gender differences. Employment is positively related—and
religion negatively related—to a higher likelihood of having children by a previous partner
for mothers but not fathers, whereas being an
immigrant and being in poor health are important
for fathers but not for mothers.
Our findings regarding multipartnered fertility
have important implications for public policy.
The Bush administration intends to promote
healthy marriage among low-income couples to
foster family stability and improve child wellbeing. To the extent that a sizable fraction of
unmarried parents have children by previous
partners, many new marriages will not create
‘‘traditional’’ nuclear families. Instead, families
would be formed where one or both of the new
spouses has responsibility for children with whom
they do not live and/or shares a residence with
children to whom they are not related. In such circumstances, the already-strained resources—both
time and money—of low-income parents would
by necessity be spread across households, yielding
diminished overall parental investment in children, compared to families with two biological
parents and only their common child(ren) that
are typically envisioned by marriage advocates.
Research suggests that children in stepfamilies
often do not fare any better than children in singleparent families, despite the fact that they often
have higher economic resources (McLanahan &
Sandefur, 1994).
There are several limitations to this research
that bear attention. First, the Fragile Families data
provide new information about multipartnered
fertility, but as noted earlier, the measures should
be considered as indicators; detailed fertility histories are not available, different items are used to
measure multipartnered fertility for mothers and
fathers, and the sample is one of births and hence
cannot be generalized to all women or to all
couples but to parents of a recent birth cohort.
Second, we use mothers’ reports of fathers’ fertility, and we recognize that mothers may have

Journal of Marriage and Family
imperfect information about fathers’ previous
children. To the extent that mothers may underreport fathers’ other children (particularly for nonresident fathers who may be more likely to have
had multiple partners), our estimates of total multipartnered fertility may be too low. A third limitation is that our estimates do not pertain to
couples outside large cities. Multipartnered fertility could be either higher or lower in suburban
and rural areas, and our results pertain only to
parents having births in large U.S. cities.
This article represents a first step at understanding the importance of multipartnered
fertility for family demography. We present
descriptive analyses of the level and correlates
of multipartnered fertility by the parents of
a recent cohort of children at a single point in
time, noting that the total prevalence of this phenomenon will only increase over time. In future
work, we will use forthcoming data from the
Fragile Families Study to analyze multipartnered
fertility prospectively to better understand the
underlying causal processes, as well as the consequences for parenting, relationship stability,
and children’s well-being. To the extent that families play a critical role in shaping children’s
development and well-being—and that parental
investment is diminished in the context of multipartnered fertility—this is an important topic that
merits further investigation.
NOTE
This research was supported by a grant to Marcia Carlson from
the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Demographic and Behavioral Sciences
Branch (K01HD042776). We are grateful to seminar participants at Columbia University and Princeton University and
to three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. We appreciate the generous financial support of
the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study provided
by NICHD (R01HD36916) and a consortium of private
foundations.

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Multipartnered Fertility

731

Table A1. Sample Characteristics by Couples’ Multipartnered Fertility Status

Total
Demographic characteristics
Mother’s age at first birth (years)
14 – 16
17 – 18
19 – 20
21 – 24
25 – 29
30 and older
M age at first birth
M number of mother’s total births (parity)
Parents have other biological children together
Father’s age at focal child’s birth (years)
Younger than 20
20 – 24
25 – 29
30 and older
Family background
Mother lived with both parents at age 15
Father lived with both parents at age 15
Mother’s race/ethnicity
White non-Hispanic
Black non-Hispanic
Hispanic
Other
Parents are of different race/ethnicity
Nativity
Mother is foreign born
Father is foreign born
Economic capacities
Mother’s education
Less than high school
High school degree
Some college
Bachelor’s degree or higher
Father’s education (mother report)
Less than high school
High school degree
Some college
Bachelor’s degree or higher
Employment status
Mother worked in past year
Father worked in past week
Poor/fair health
Mother
Father
Social-psychological characteristics
M frequency of church attendance (range ¼ 1 – 5)
Mother
Father

Neither
a
Has MPF

Father
MPF Only

Mother
MPF Only

Both
Parent MPF

7.6
14.6
15.6
20.6
22.5
19.2
23.98
2.07
47.1

7.2
9.3
11.2
19.0
28.3
25.0
25.33
1.79
51.6

4.8
12.1
27.9
28.1
14.8
12.4
22.90
1.58
39.9

11.3
32.9
20.4
21.0
10.6
3.9
20.17
3.22
51.0

9.0
29.0
20.5
20.5
11.0
10.0
21.53
3.09
25.8

4.9
20.2
24.0
50.9

6.0
17.0
25.2
51.8

3.1
23.5
22.0
51.4

4.1
42.6
19.3
34.1

1.3
11.7
24.2
62.9

54.1
61.1

63.7
68.3

42.6
40.6

30.8
55.5

37.1
42.5

39.4
21.7
30.7
8.2
14.7

48.4
12.8
28.8
10.0
12.8

23.7
35.0
36.9
4.5
22.0

29.9
27.1
35.8
7.2
12.9

16.5
51.4
29.1
3.0
18.8

23.9
23.7

27.2
26.0

19.5
16.8

14.2
17.6

20.7
23.4

26.8
30.4
19.4
23.5

22.6
25.1
19.4
33.0

28.8
41.8
19.7
9.7

37.9
38.2
15.1
8.8

36.8
38.7
23.5
1.0

24.2
28.3
24.4
23.1

21.5
22.2
23.2
33.1

26.7
39.0
30.5
3.9

28.6
37.2
26.7
7.5

32.9
43.5
21.2
2.4

72.9
88.5

73.3
91.7

74.0
79.1

77.0
86.2

65.0
82.9

7.3
6.9

5.0
4.9

13.1
10.9

7.7
6.8

13.1
15.8

3.26
3.07

3.39
3.17

3.24
2.95

2.84
2.81

2.97
2.89

Journal of Marriage and Family

732
Table A1. Continued

Total
M distrust of other gender (range ¼ 1 – 4)
Mother
Father
Substance problem
Mother
Father
Father ever in jail (mother report)
Thought about an abortion
Mother
Father
Couple’s relationship status at baby’s birth
Married
Cohabiting
Visiting
Not romantic
Father not interviewed at time of birth
Unweighted number of cases (N)

1.97
1.90

Neither
a
Has MPF

1.92
1.86

Father
MPF Only

2.12
2.00

Mother
MPF Only

1.98
1.95

Both
Parent MPF

2.12
1.98

1.1
3.0
16.7

.9
1.4
10.1

2.5
9.9
34.9

.4
2.2
17.7

1.6
5.2
33.5

14.9
8.8

8.7
6.2

27.1
12.2

22.0
14.4

28.4
15.6

60.6
21.4
12.2
5.9
89.1
4,160

74.6
14.4
7.1
4.0
93.3
1,946

36.1
27.8
23.6
12.6
75.2
744

42.6
41.1
12.6
3.7
89.3
678

28.4
33.3
27.2
11.0
81.8
792

Note: All figures are weighted by national sampling weights. MPF ¼ multipartnered fertility.
a
Includes first births and parents whose other children are only with each other.