MOTHERS, CHILDREN, AND COHABITATION - THE INTERGENERATIONAL EFFECTS OF ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR

We investigate the reciprocal relationships between parents' attitudes and their children's behavior by focusing on attitudes toward nonmari tal cohabitation and experience with cohabitation and marriage. We tes t hypotheses predicting that parental attitudes influence their childr en's behavior and that children's behavior alters their parents' attit udes. We use data from an intergenerational panel study of mothers and their children to specify models testing these predictions. Our findi ngs support the hypotheses that (1) parental attitudes toward cohabita tion influence children's behavior after controlling for children's ow n attitudes and (2) children's behavior influences their parents' atti tudes. The empirical results also shed light on gender differences in the links between attitudes and behavior and possible causal links bet ween aggregate level trends in family formation attitudes and behavior .