Midpregnancy Marriage and Divorce: Why the Death of Shotgun Marriage Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that births following the colloquially termed “shotgun marriage”—that is, births to parents who married between conception and the birth—are nearing obsolescence. To investigate trends in shotgun marriage, we matched North Carolina administrative data on nearly 800,000 first births among white and black mothers to marriage and divorce records. We found that among married births, midpregnancy-married births (our preferred term for shotgun-married births) have been relatively stable at about 10 % over the past quarter-century while increasing substantially for vulnerable population subgroups. In 2012, among black and white less-educated and younger women, midpregnancy-married births accounted for approximately 20 % to 25 % of married first births. The increasing representation of midpregnancy-married births among married births raises concerns about well-being among at-risk families because midpregnancy marriages may be quite fragile. Our analysis revealed, however, that midpregnancy marriages were more likely to dissolve only among more advantaged groups. Of those groups considered to be most at risk of divorce—namely, black women with lower levels of education and who were younger—midpregnancy marriages had the same or lower likelihood of divorce as preconception marriages. Our results suggest an overlooked resiliency in a type of marriage that has only increased in salience.

Cohabitation and Marriage: Complexity and Diversity in Union‐Formation Patterns

“…Union transitions—into cohabitation or from cohabitation to marriage—vary substantially across race, ethnicity, and social class (Lichter et al, ). Most coresidential unions formed after conception are cohabitations rather than marriages; the decline of what was once pejoratively termed “shotgun marriage” has seemingly given way to “shotgun cohabitation” (Gibson‐Davis, Ananat, & Gassman‐Pines, ; Lichter et al, ). Although postconception marriages produce marital births, postconception cohabitations result in nonmarital births, at least as defined by the NCHS (Musick & Michelmore, ; Williams et al, ).…”

The Effect of Prenatal Stress, Proxied by Marital and Paternity Status, on the Risk of Preterm Birth

“…Moreover, to be unmarried and rejected by the father of a child, or not knowing his identity (UM-FDA), is related to even higher risk of preterm birth than being unmarried with acknowledgement of paternity (UM-FDP). Regarding marital status, we assumed that getting married after conception (MAC) [41] is more stressful than getting married before conception (MBC). Thus, we expected that these four types of relationship between mother and father (described as the “Marital-Father Data index”) represent different intensities of prenatal stress.…”

“…It has been shown that if the first pregnancy occurs in a cohabiting union, the couple is more likely to marry [77]. Since the marriage decision is usually the man’s, and mid-pregnancy marriages (sometimes colloquially referred to as “shotgun marriages”) seem to be relatively fragile [30,41], we decided to treat the sequence of marriage and conception as a stress-related factor. Consequently, the “Marital-Father Data index” that we created includes two forms of marital status: (1) a couple gets married after it learns about a pregnancy (MAC), the so-called “legitimizing marriage” or “reinforced marriage” [30] and (2) the traditional, old-fashioned marriage which occurs prior to the first conception (MBC).…”

Pathways to Parenthood in Social and Family Contexts: Decade in Review, 2020

“…Many of the relationships in which early, nonmarital, and unintended births occur are unstable, especially if parents never marry (Edin & Tach, ; Gibson‐Davis, Ananat, & Gassman‐Pines, ; Musick & Michelmore, ; Rackin & Gibson‐Davis, ). Dissolution, in turn, often means repartnering and thus increases the odds of experiencing multiple‐partner, or multipartnered, fertility (MPF).…”