Will children born in cohabitation continue to experience a family stability disadvantage?

• In Event: 50666 - The Demography of Family Inequality and Wellbeing (Co-sponsored by Section on Sociology of Population)

Abstract

I use Harmonized History data to show that even though children born within marriage are less likely to experience parental union dissolution than children whose parents marry after their birth, this children’s marital stability premium erodes as cohabiting births become more common. If this finding were interpreted in isolation, it could imply that the cohabitation boom would not impact children’s family stability as much as might otherwise be anticipated: social normativity lessens the stability penalty associated with cohabitation. This paper instead demonstrates how little difference the convergence in stability for unions formalized before and after childbirth matters for children’s overall chances of growing up without parental union dissolution. First, the risk associated with being born to cohabiting parents who do not later marry continues to increase as cohabiting births become commonplace. Second, the share of cohabiting births that is followed by parental marriage has been declining in the vast majority of Northern countries. Overall, children born in cohabitation will continue to experience a family stability disadvantage in the 21st Century, even if the subset whose parents marry after their birth contribute nothing to the overall family stability disadvantage.

Author

• Laurie F. DeRose, Catholic University of America