A small extension to “costs and rewards of children: The effects of becoming a parent on adults’ lives”

Abstract

Key Words: cohabitation, marriage, mental health, nonmarital birth. In a recent article published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Nomaguchi and Milkie (2003) addressed an important issue insufficiently researched in the family literature. Their study investigated the effects of becoming a parent on multiple dimensions of adult well-being. This work signifies an advance on a number of fronts because it considers a variety of indicators of well-being, such as social integration, marital conflict, and hours of housework, and uses longitudinal data to establish changes in these outcomes associated with the birth of a first child. They also examined variations by marital status (married vs. unmarried) and how these relationships differ men and women. One of their many findings was that the effects of becoming parent are much less positive or more negative singles than they are married individuals. They conclude that for unmarried men and women, becoming a parent may bring more costs than benefits to their lives (p. 370). Understanding the impact of nonmarital fertility on parents' well-being is increasingly important. Nonmarital childbearing has risen dramatically, both as a consequence of the greater number of years young adults spend unmarried, and of increased birth rates among unmarried women (Smith, Morgan, & Koropeckyj-Cox, 1996). In fact, among White women, nonmarital birth rates doubled at all ages between the mid1970s and the mid-1990s, and today, one out of three children is born to an unmarried mother. This proportion is especially high Black children; two thirds of Black births are to unmarried mothers. Nomaguchi and Milkie (2003) failed to make an important distinction between new parents who are cohabiting and those who are single. In the early 1990s, roughly the period during which individuals in their sample were becoming parents, estimates from the National Survey of Family Growth show that about 39% of nonmarital births were to women in cohabiting unions (Bumpass & Lu, 2000). (An analysis of Nomaguchi and Milkie's NSFH sample shows that the same percentage [39%] of the unmarried new mothers at Wave 2 were cohabiting.) Cohabiting births represent a growing proportion of nonmarital childbearing, and empirically separating them from other nonmarital births would enable a richer understanding of the reasons that having a child brings more costs than benefits to unmarried parents. A developing body of literature suggests that cohabiting families differ from other unmarriedparent families in important ways (e.g., Bulcroft, Carmody, & Bulcroft, 1998; Dunifon & Kowaleski-Jones, 2002; Manning & Lamb, 2003; Raley, Frisco, & Wildsmith, forthcoming). Consequently, it seems likely that the impact of becoming an unmarried parent on social integration and mental health varies by cohabitation. Prior theory and empirical findings, however, provide no clear indication of whether cohabitation or singlehood should be associated with poorer outcomes. Some perspectives on cohabitation-those that view cohabitation as similar to marriage-suggest that cohabiters would enjoy more benefits and fewer costs to becoming a parent as compared with singles. For men, cohabitation might be associated with better outcomes than being single two reasons. First, being married is associated with greater social integration. This benefit might extend to cohabitation as well. Second, cohabiting fathers will have more access to the child than single fathers. For women, cohabitation might be associated with better outcomes than being single because live-in partners might offer greater social, emotional, physical, and financial support. Although there is some evidence to suggest that women's cohabiting partners contribute only modest financial resources (Lerman, 2002; Manning & Lichter, 1996; Morrison & Ritualo, 2000), they may also provide mothers social support and help with child care. …