- The Future of Children -

 - The Future of Children -: Marcia Carlson and Sara McLanahan find that by age five, nearly two-fifths of children of unwed parents had no regular contact with their fathers in the past two years, while another two-fifths were seeing their father on a regular basis (the remaining one-fifth fell somewhere in between).17 Having a father who is actively involved in the child's upbringing even though he is not residing in the household could yield numerous benefits in terms of child health and development. Nonresident father involvement might also benefit children by raising the quality of mothers' parenting. Nonresident father involvement could also, however, be detrimental if fathers acted in ways that interfered with child health and development or if poor relationship quality between the father and mother led to lower-quality parenting behaviors on her part.