Trends in cohabitation and implications for children's family contexts in the United States

This paper documents increasing cohabitation in the United States, and the implications of this trend for the family lives of children. The stability of marriage-like relationships (including marriage and cohabitation) has de creased - despite a constant divorce rate. Children increasingly live in co habiting families either as a result of being born to cohabiting parents or of their mother's entry into a cohabiting union. The proportion of births to unmarried women born into cohabiting families increased from 29 to 39 pe r cent in the period 1980-84 to 1990-94, accounting for almost all of the i ncrease in unmarried childbearing. As a consequence, about two-fifths of al l children spend some time in a cohabiting family, and the greater instabil ity of families begun by cohabitation means that children are also more lik ely to experience family disruption. Estimates from multi-state life tables indicate the extent to which the family lives of children are spent increa singly in cohabiting families and decreasingly in married families.