The influence of remarriage on the racial difference in mother-only families in 1910

Historical demography documents that mother-only, families were more common among African Americans than among Euro-Americans early in the twentieth c entury. We find direct evidence that African American males in both first a nd higher-order marriages were more likely to have (re)married previously m arried women and were more likely to have (re)married women with children. This racial difference in (re)marital partner choice reduced the racial dif ference in the prevalence of mother-only families such that, in the absence of such remarriage choices, the prevalence of mother-only families in the turn-of-the-century African American population would have been even higher than has been reported. Remarriage in this period countered the various de mographic, economic, cultural, and social-institutional forces that disprop ortionately destabilized African American marriages; it must be taken in to account more fully by analysts concerned with racial differences in family structure.