FAMILY-STRUCTURE AND THE RISK OF A PREMARITAL BIRTH

The positive association between growing up in a nonintact family and the risk of a first premarital birth has been interpreted by researche rs as consistent with three hypotheses: (1) a childhood socialization hypothesis - that women who grow up in a mother-only family during ear ly childhood are socialized in ways that result in a high risk of a pr emarital birth; (2) a social control hypothesis - that the supervision of adolescents is more difficult in single-parent families than in tw o-parent families; and (3) an instability and change hypothesis - that a premarital birth is a response to the stresses accompanying changes in a woman's family situation. Although these hypotheses imply distin ct behavioral mechanisms, adjudicating between them has proven difficu lt, in part because researchers have relied on static measures of fami ly structure. We use data from the National Survey of Families and Hou seholds and continuous-time hazard models to investigate the effects o n premarital births of dynamic family measures that reflect a woman's family situation between birth and age 19. Our findings are consistent with the instability and change hypothesis, but provide little suppor t for the socialization hypothesis and the social control hypothesis.