Social Fathering and Childlessness

This article aims to investigate the relationship between social fathering, defined as the experience of men who are married to or cohabiting with the biological mother of a child to whom they are not biologically related, and childlessness. The point of departure is the increasing childlessness in Norway and most Western countries. Using Norwegian administrative register data on men born in 1980, including complete partnership histories covering 18 years, we estimate the relationship between social fatherhood and childlessness at age 42. Men's partnership histories were defined using sequence analysis. Our results show that men who experience social fathering are more likely to be childless than those who do not. However, the relationship between social fathering and childlessness is not uniform: childlessness varies by the duration, timing, and complexity of partnerships. Men with transient and short-term social fathering experiences and unstable, complex partnership histories are more likely to remain childless. Men in long-term partnerships who experience social fathering are more likely to remain childless than men in long-term partnerships without such experience.