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Parental Cohabitation Experiences and Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes

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Abstract

Children are increasingly spending time in cohabiting parent families. Most studies that examine the implications of parental cohabitation focus on parental living arrangements at a single point in time. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we assess whether and how parental cohabitation during childhood influences adolescent girls’ well-being. This work moves beyond prior studies by specifically considering the effects of the exposure to, transitions, and age at which children lived in cohabiting parent families. The results indicate living in cohabiting parent families is consequential for earlier sexual initiation, likelihood of having a teen birth, and high school graduation. Prior work suggests that the explanation for the negative effect of parental cohabitation is family instability. Yet, our empirical work shows that family instability does not explain the relationship between cohabitation and negative child outcomes. We conclude that the best way to understand the implications of parental cohabitation is to adopt a dynamic family experience model.

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Notes

  1. We test for interactions of cohabiting parent families and birth cohort. We find that the effects of cohabiting parent families are similar across all birth cohorts considered in this paper.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University which has core funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21 HD042831-01). Paper presented at the annual Population Association of America meetings in May 2002 in Atlanta and the annual American Economic Association meetings January 2003 in Washington D.C. We appreciate the helpful comments provided by Susan Brown, Daniel Lichter, and Kelly Raley.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Gerontology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Ronald E. Bulanda

  2. Department of Sociology, Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA

    Wendy D. Manning

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  1. Ronald E. Bulanda
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Correspondence to Ronald E. Bulanda.

Appendix

Appendix

Percent of respondents experience each adolescent outcome according to family structure experiences

 

Early age first sexa

Birth by 18

High school graduate

Ever married two biological parent

10.6

6.3

85.1

Ever single mother

16.3

12.5

75.9

Ever married stepparent

15.0

11.4

78.3

Ever cohabiting two biological parent

26.1

21.8

65.8

Ever cohabiting stepparent

20.1

11.9

68.8

  1. Source: NSFG 1995
  2. Note: Weighted percentages
  3. aPercent experiencing sex by the age of 15

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Bulanda, R.E., Manning, W.D. Parental Cohabitation Experiences and Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes. Popul Res Policy Rev 27, 593–618 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-008-9083-8

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