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ࡗ Families Formed Outside of MarriageCohabitation and childbearing outside of marriage are increasingly common family arrangements in the United States. Cohabitation is becoming more like formal marriage in that both are childrearing institutions. Attempts to study the meaning of families formed outside of marriage face the challenge of studying a moving target because the rapid rise in nonmarital families contributes to new meanings and institutional supports. Among these institutions are state policies that formalize ties between members of nonmarital families. This review summarizes the changing demography of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing, considers the causes and effects of these changes, and describes some recent policies that formalize the relationship between members of families formed outside of marriage. These policies may affect family members' behavior.Marriage and childbearing within marriage are the centerpiece of family studies. Researchers investigate the formation and dissolution of relationships, the quality of marital and parental relationships, and the effects of marriage and changes in marital status on individuals. Marriage forms alliances between kin groups and allows the exchange of property and other resources. Children are the most important of the resources created in marriage. Individual and family-level processes, such as who marries, who has children and how the children are raised affect reproduction. State

This paper examines changes in marriage as an institution for rearing children in the United States. It reviews the effects of marital instability and living arrangements on children's welfare, and focuses on how children's economic, emotional, and social needs are met when parents separate. The review shows that changes in marriage and childrearing have different consequences for women and men. For women, marriage and parenthood are distinct institutions. Women provide for children's needs, whether or not the women are married to their children's fathers. For men, marriage defines responsibilities to children. At divorce, men typically disengage from their biological children. When men remarry they may acquire new children whom they help to support. The review describes the effects on children of divorced mothers' and fathers' varying commitments to childrearing. It considers the difficulties that divorced parents experience when they try to continue to share responsibilities for children after separation, and it suggests avenues for future research.

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