The Demography of Families: A Review of Patterns and Change

The authors review demographic trends and research on families in the United States, with a special focus on the past decade. They consider the following several topics: (a) marriage and remarriage, (b) divorce, (c) cohabitation, (d) fertility, (e) same‐gender unions, (f) immigrant families, and (g) children’s living arrangements. Throughout, the authors review both overall trends and patterns as well as those by social class and race–ethnicity. The authors discuss major strands of recent research, emphasizing emerging themes and promising directions. They close with a summary of central patterns and trends and conclude that recent trends are not as uniform as they tended to be in earlier decades, making the description of family change increasingly complex.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152984/1/jomf12612.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152984/2/jomf12612_am.pd

The Decoupling of Marriage and Parenthood? Trends in the Timing of Marital First Births, 1945–2002

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106837/1/jomf12114.pd

Marriage on the Public Policy Agenda: What Do Policy Makers Need to Know from Research?

For the last 30 years, encouraging employment has been the primary focus of U.S. anti-poverty policies. More recently, however, promoting the formation and maintenance of “healthy marriages” has emerged as a central feature of domestic social policy in the United States, with proposals pending that would allocate up to $1.5 billion to undertake and evaluate marriage promotion efforts. The central goal of this paper is to elaborate the implications of social science research for such efforts. We proceed as follows. After reviewing trends in family structure and theories and empirical evidence that attempt to account for these trends, we discuss various proposed marriage promotion policies and activities. Next, we identify potential challenges to designing, evaluating, and learning from these initiatives. We conclude with recommendations for research needed in order to move policy forward.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58003/1/Seefeldt-Smock.pd

The relative stability of cohabiting and marital unions for children

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.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43523/1/11113_2004_Article_5144453.pd

Gender and the Short-Run Economic Consequences of Marital Disruption

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58004/1/smock-94.pd

Living together unmarried in the United States: Demographic perspectives and implications for family policy

ABSTRACT This paper synthesizes research on the demographic correlates and consequences of unmarried, heterosexual cohabitation in the United States. First, we place cohabitation in the context of recent demographic trends in union formation and dissolution. Second, we consider the implications of cohabitation for child wellbeing. Third, we review population subgroup variation in the role of cohabitation in family patterns, focusing on social cla ss and race and ethnicity. Finally, we discuss how and why unmarried cohabitation is implicated in recent dialogues about family policy

Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: A Comment on Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019)

ObjectiveOur goal is to comment on a recently published paper (Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2019. Journal of Marriage and Family, 81, 42‐58) and provide an alternative analysis of the association between premarital cohabitation and marital instability.BackgroundTheir findings run counter to recently published papers on this topic. Although their article offers a potential explanation for this finding, the models include multiple and potentially confounding measures of time creating questions about their conclusions.MethodOur comment is based on approaches used in prior studies of cohabitation and marital instability using the same data source. Reviews of measures of time and data limitations are included along with new event history analyses focusing on marriage cohorts.ResultsTheir models arguably include too many indicators of time. Unlike the study by Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) and consistent with other recent studies, we find that cohabitation has a weaker association with dissolution among recently married couples and cohabitation with a spouse prior to marriage is not associated with marital instability for recent marriage cohorts. This finding holds even when accounting for variation by marital duration.ConclusionThis comment provides insights into the use of the National Survey of Family Growth data (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/index.htm data) and measurement of time. Our results provide evidence that counters the conclusion by Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) that scholars have been “misled” about the role of cohabitation and marital dissolution.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/166237/1/jomf12724_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/166237/2/jomf12724.pd