Marriage

The share of births to unmarried women in the United States has almost doubled over the last 25 years, going from 22% of births in 1985 to 41% in 2010. These are not just teenagers or older women having babies on their own. Parents who are living together but not married account for much of the overall increase in births to unmarried women, especially in the last decade.  

For babies and children growing up, living with two cohabiting parents in many ways resembles living with two married parents. There are two potential earners contributing to the economics of the household and two potential care-givers. But we cannot just assume that cohabitation and marriage are the same, because couples who have a child while living together are more likely to separate at a later point than married couples who have a child. Furthermore, researchers have found that children’s wellbeing can be undermined when the living arrangements of their parents change.

To draw meaningful conclusions about the impact of rising childbearing among cohabiting couples, we need to learn more about whether cohabiting families are becoming more or less stable over time. Our research focuses specifically on couples who have had a child together. These couples express high hopes that their relationships will last, but what actually happens and with what consequences for their children? We used nationally representative survey data from the 1990s and 2000s to examine changes in the stability of married families, cohabiting families where marriages do not happen, and cohabiting families where parents marry around the time a child arrives.Couples who live together and then get married at some point before or after their first child is born have roughly the same chances of breaking up as couples who marry without ever living together. more...

It matters what kind of family children grow up in. Researchers have discovered that living in a household headed by a single mother can harm children’s health, education, and economic futures. Although the reasons are not entirely clear, marriage confers benefits on mothers and children even when other factors are taken into consideration.

These findings lead many people to worry about the impact that the decline of marriage may be having on children – and some argue that the nation has a strong interest in promoting marriage, particularly among single mothers. Proponents of this approach claim that marriage provides a way to end poverty and welfare dependence for single mothers. They see marriage promotion as a way to enhance the well-being of children, ensuring them the benefits usually associated with living in a married-parent household.

But my research and other studies suggest that marriage promotion is not a magic wand. Many women want to marry, but cannot find the right partners; for them, raising children without husbands may be the most viable option. Race and educational disadvantage play a role in women’s marriage prospects, and we must take such realities into account as public policies are fashioned.
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All their lives, Baby Boomers – as we label Americans born between 1946 and 1964 – have been rewriting our nation’s scripts for love, cohabitation, and marriage. Desires for individual fulfillment and personal happiness have guided their choices each step of the way. Nearly 90% of Boomers eventually married, but they also led the “divorce revolution” of the 1970s and 1980s. Even now, with 10,000 Boomers turning 65 each day since January 1, 2011, these aging Americans remain at the forefront of family change.

Boomers have much more diverse family and living arrangements than older Americans in previous generations. Many are part of married couples, yet one in three Boomers is unmarried. Some of those never married in the first place, and probably will not at this stage of life. Others have divorced at least once prior to entering the golden years. And many Boomers are still getting divorced during old age – indeed, the “gray divorce rate” in America has doubled over the past two decades. Why has divorce become more common for older Americans – and what do the swelling ranks of older people on their own mean for U.S. society and public policy? Divorce is more common among older adults than ever before. more...