Children and the Stability of Cohabiting Couples

Children are increasingly part of cohabiting unions. The marriage literature indicates that children generally promote stability of marriages but it remains unknown whether children have a similar effect on the stability of their parent’s cohabiting unions. Using the National Survey of Family Growth this paper evaluates the effects of children on the stability of cohabitation. This paper expands upon prior work in three ways. First, cohabiting unions are conceptualized in two ways to account for a fluid definition of stability. I examine the traditional end point ( i.e., termination of the cohabiting union) and another conceptual end point -the end of the parents’ relationship – operationalized as the date they stopped living together (i.e., cohabiting couples who marry remain at risk of dissolution). Second, the timing of parenthood is carefully accounted for by indicating whether a child was conceived or born in cohabitation. Third, variation in the meaning of cohabitation is captured by focusing on race and ethnic differences in the effects of children. The results indicate that children conceived during cohabitation are associated with greater levels of stability but children born during cohabitation do not influence the stability of their parent’s cohabiting union. When the expanded notion of stability (cohabiting couples who marry remain at risk of dissolution) is employed, children born during cohabitation still do not influence stability of the couple’s relationship but children conceived during cohabitation are associated with greater couple stability.