Married parents provide stability - Your Life - differences in stability for white children and Hispanic/African American children - Brief Article

Children whose parents live together but are net married are twice as likely to face their parents' breakup as those born to married couples, reports a University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR), Ann Arbor, study. By age one, 15% of offspring born to cohabiting parents saw their mothers and fathers part company, and by age five, half their parents had separated. Kids born to married parents experienced a much greater level of domestic stability; by age one, only four percent saw their parents break up, and, by age five, about 15% had parents who had split up.

"Our findings appear to strength en the case for marriage," asserts sociologist Pamela Smock, ISR's associate director. "Quite clearly, children born into first marriages, rather than to cohabiting parents, enjoy much higher chances of growing up in two-parent families."

However, it is a different story for children of color, Smock points out. "For never-married cohabiting Hispanic and black mothers, marriage after the birth of a child does not provide an advantage in terms of stability. Black and Hispanic children born to cohabiting parents who later marry face statistically similar odds of instability as children born to parents who continue to cohabit but don't marry."

In general, offspring born to cohabiting parents had one-and-a-half times higher odds of experiencing parental separation than those born to married parents. In light of recent policy discussions about welfare, the findings suggest that efforts to encourage marriage among low-income parents, many of whom already are living together, may not be an effective strategy for assuring child well-being.

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