Cohabitation and Children's Family Instability

This study estimates how much children's family instability is missed when we do not count transitions into and out of cohabitation, and examines early life course trajectories of children to see whether children who experience maternal cohabitation face more family instability than children wh...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of marriage and family 2004-02, Vol.66 (1), p.210-219
Main Authors: Kelly Raley, R., Wildsmith, Elizabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Black people
Child care
Child growth
Child Rearing
Children
Children & youth
Cohabitation
Community Resources
Divorce
Families & family life
Family
family instability
Family Stability
Family Structure
Family studies
Home Environment
Interpersonal Relationship
Marriage
Married persons
Mothers
National Surveys
Of General Interest
One Parent Family
Parenthood
Parents
Peer Groups
race
Remarriage
Sexuality. Marriage. Family relations
Sociology
Sociology of the family
Sociology of the family. Age groups
State Surveys
Trajectories
United States of America
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Description
Summary:This study estimates how much children's family instability is missed when we do not count transitions into and out of cohabitation, and examines early life course trajectories of children to see whether children who experience maternal cohabitation face more family instability than children who do not. Using data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, analyses show that adding transitions into and out of cohabitation to those into and out of marriage increases our measure of family instability by about 30% for White children (N = 1575) and over 100% for Black children (N = 774). We conclude that future research on the impact of children's family composition while growing up should take into account transitions into and out of cohabitation.
ISSN:0022-2445
1741-3737
DOI:10.1111/j.0022-2445.2004.00014.x-i1