Family Demographic Influences on the Timing and Stability of First Cohabiting Unions
Open Access
- Author:
- Thorsen, Margaret L.
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 27, 2014
- Committee Members:
- Valarie Elizabeth King, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Paul Amato, Committee Member
Melissa Hardy, Committee Member
David Eggebeen, Committee Member
Alan Booth, Committee Member - Keywords:
- cohabitation
family
union formation
family demography
transition to adulthood
event history analysis - Abstract:
- Nonmarital cohabitation is an increasingly common union experience for individuals and a context for family building, both as a pre-cursor to marriage and a site of childbearing. Several factors may push or pull individuals into a first cohabiting union and impact the stability of their unions thereafter, including prior experiences in the family environment as well as concurrent behavior relating to childbearing and educational attainment. Much of the research looking at cohabitation formation and outcomes, however, has concentrated on cohabitation in early adulthood or focused on the experiences of women. Furthermore, in this literature there is often an implicit assumption that the influence of predictors on cohabitation timing or stability is constant across age at union entrance or cohabitation duration. The current thesis extends work in this area by examining the timing of entering into first cohabitations and the outcomes of these unions for both men and women, from adolescence through young adulthood, and considers whether the factors shaping these processes operate consistently across this age range. The analytic sample comes from nationally-representative data from Waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Several dimensions of the family environment during adolescence and concurrent behavior across the transition to adulthood are considered as predictors of behavior in cohabiting unions. This thesis also examines whether these family and sociodemographic factors affect the risk of entering cohabiting unions in similar ways during adolescence, early adulthood, and later into young adulthood, and if these factors affect the risk of transitioning to marriage or breaking-up in similar ways across the duration of first cohabitations. Results indicate that exposure during adolescence to family instability, parental cohabitation, lower parental SES, and low family belonging are associated with elevated risk of entering into cohabiting unions, but primarily during adolescence and early adulthood. At older ages, many of these family factors are no longer associated with an elevated rates of cohabiting, as individuals from a variety of family backgrounds are increasingly likely to cohabit. Family factors, including having a low sense of belonging to one’s family, are also associated with the stability of first cohabitations, contributing to a lower likelihood of transitioning to marriage and a higher likelihood of union dissolution. Results also indicate that pregnancy and childbearing may motivate entrance into first cohabitations and contribute to the likelihood that these unions transition to marriage or end in a break-up. However, the influence of pregnancy and childbearing on entering a cohabitation as well as their effect on the outcome of that union differs depending on the age of the individual and when in the cohabitation the childbearing occurs. Furthermore, results point to important gender and race differences in the role that pregnancy and childbearing plays in shaping first cohabitation experiences. Findings from this thesis highlight the linkage between the adolescent family environment and first cohabitation experiences, lending support to a life course perspective which emphasizes the enduring influence of earlier experiences for later behavior. Additionally, results contribute to the existing literature on cohabitation and highlight the importance of considering the shifting influence of predictors across age and cohabitation duration.