Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: A Reply to Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg

Abstract

ObjectiveOur goal is to show how premarital cohabitation's association with marital dissolution can be measured consistently over time.BackgroundRosenfeld and Roesler (2019) showed that premarital cohabitation led to lower rates of marital dissolution early in marital duration, but higher rates of marital dissolution after a few years of marital duration. Analysis based on marriage cohorts can erroneously appear to show that the association between premarital cohabitation and marital dissolution has disappeared in the most recent cohort.MethodWe use discrete time event history models to study the association between premarital cohabitation and marital dissolution across calendar time and across marriage cohorts, with data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). We examine a variety of modeling strategies and data filters including those in Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg's (MSK) comment to show how different data and modeling choices can bias the results.ResultsMSK's analysis rests on simple misunderstandings of our models. MSK discarded more than 70% of the valid couple years available in the NSFG data, and then used the resulting lower statistical power to declare a key interaction insignificant. MSK treat children as a time‐invariant variable despite the fact that the presence of children changes over the course of relationships. MSK discard one wave of the data without explanation. All of these choices affect the outcome.ConclusionOur prior result stands: premarital cohabitation consistently predicts higher rates of marital dissolution in the U.S. Research into marital dissolution should be made more robust, transparent, and replicable.

Stability and change in predictors of marital dissolution in the US 1950–2017

“…The following variables are available in every wave and are used as controls in every event history model below: wife's race (distinguishing between White women, Black women, and women of other races), wife's education (time varying), wife's age at marriage, whether wife was living with an intact two parent family of origin at age 14 or not, marital duration of wife's first marriage (time varying), and the presence of minor children in the home (time varying). On the importance of making use of time-varying data on children in the home, see Rosenfeld and Roesler (2021).…”

“…A decline across marriage cohorts in the association between premarital cohabitation and the risk of marital dissolution would (if true) be consistent with the Converging Destinies hypothesis. For a review of the debate over premarital cohabitation and the risk of divorce, see Manning et al (2021) and Rosenfeld and Roesler (2021).…”

The growth of education differentials in marital dissolution in the United States

“…To be captured in later cycles of the NSFG, those who married in earlier cohorts had to have married at younger ages, which is a risk factor for dissolution. These restrictions have been questioned with regard to their implications on generalizability (see Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg 2021 ; Rosenfeld and Roesler 2021 ). However, I find that these restrictions still leave 75% of the eligible sample and that results were substantively similar without restrictions, so I continue with the restricted sample as this bias is not evenly distributed across my sample; the less educated are more likely to marry at younger ages.…”

The Impacts of Postdivorce Cohabitation and Relationship Duration on the Early Marital Climate of Remarriages

“…As a result, many couples who elect to cohabit may end up "sliding" into marriages (Stanley et al, 2010). The empirical debate surrounding the relationship between cohabitation and marital climate is ongoing, with the work of one camp suggesting a weaker association between premarital cohabitation and marital stability and dissolution (Manning et al, 2021), and the work of other camps (Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2021) showing that cohabiting is a reliable predictor of marital dissolution.…”