The relative stability of cohabiting and marital unions for children

Abstract

Children are increasingly born into cohabiting parent families, but we know little to date about the implications of this family pattern for children's lives. We examine whether children born into premarital cohabitation and first marriages experience similar rates of parental disruption, and whether marriage among cohabiting parents enhances union stability. These issues are important because past research has linked instability in family structure with lower levels of child well-being. Drawing on the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, we find that white, black and Hispanic children born to cohabiting parents experience greater levels of instability than children born to married parents. Moreover, black and Hispanic children whose cohabiting parents marry do not experience the same levels of family stability as those born to married parents; among white children, however, the marriage of cohabiting parents raises levels of family stability to that experienced by children born in marriage. The findings from this paper contribute to the debate about the benefits of marriage for children.

A review of the antecedents of union dissolution

“…The rates of dissolution are generally higher for cohabitants than for married couples, even if the partners have common children (Andersson 2002;Andersson and Philipov 2002;Berrington 2001;Heuveline, Timberlake, and Furstenberg 2003;Jensen and Clausen 2003;Manning, Smock, and Majumdar 2004;Raley and Wildsmith 2004;Wu and Musick 2008). To the extent that lower levels of relationship satisfaction and commitment to the union keep cohabitants from marrying, the difference can be explained by self-selection of more stable unions from cohabitation into marriage.…”

A demographic analysis of the family structure experiences of children in the United States

“…The black-white difference results from the fact that "shotgun" weddings and cohabitations are much more common for whites than for blacks and Hispanics (Manning, 2004;Manning, Smock, and Majumdar, 2004). Another important source of the difference is the higher propensity of black women to conceive children outside of a co-residential union.…”

Cohabitation and children's living arrangements

“…A number of factors make U.S. cohabiting unions potentially disadvantageous environments for raising children, including lower incomes, lower relationship quality, and higher dissolution rates than marriages (Cavanagh and Huston 2006;Graefe and Lichter 1999;Manning and Brown 2006;Manning, Smock, and Majumdar 2004;Osborne and McLanahan 2007;Raley and Wildsmith 2004). Many of these differences predate union formation, and thus reflect the disproportionate selection of couples with the least resources and the lowest expectations for relationship stability into cohabiting relationships and cohabiting parenthood (Kenney and McLanahan 2006;Lillard, Brien, and Waite 1995).…”