Researchers and policy makers have long been concerned that government policies may influence individual behavior in unintended ways. In particular, they worry that by providing mothers with an income that is independent of marriage, welfare and child support policies may discourage marriage and...

This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to examine whether family instability is associated with changes in perceived social support, material hardship, maternal depression, and parenting stress among mothers of young children. In addition to accounting for the...

A growing body of research has found support for the idea that children’s behavioral development and school performance may be influenced as much by multiple changes in family composition during childhood as by the quality and character of the families in which children reside at any given...

As policy makers seek to devise programs to promote healthy marriages among unmarried parents, significant differences between married and unmarried parents as well as differences among unmarried parents must be taken into account. A majority of unmarried parents express a desire to marry, but...

Parental socialization is one pathway through which family structure affects child well-being. Because of this established link, it is important to understand the relationship between family structure and a mother’s behaviors with her children. Theory posits that family structure affects...

Parental substance abuse is associated with adverse health and developmental outcomes for children. Existing research, however, has not fully explored the relative magnitude of the associations between maternal, paternal, and both parents’ substance abuse and child outcomes, nor has it...

Prior research linking family structure with parenting often confounds the effects of family structure with the effects of family instability. In this analysis, I use data from the Fragile Families Study (N= 3107) to answer two main questions: (a) Are there differences in maternal stress and...

We use data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N = 2,111) to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers’ partnership changes between birth and age 3 on children’s behavior. We find that children born to unmarried and minority parents experience significantly more partnership...

Today, 37% of all births are to unmarried mothers (Hamilton, Martin, & Ventura, 2006). This represents a doubling in nonmarital childbearing in the past 25 years. Reducing nonmarital childbearing and promoting marriage among unmarried parents have become major policy concerns because, although...

We use data from the Fragile Families Study (N = 1,370) to examine child behavioral problems among children born to cohabiting and married parents who remain together until the child is age 3. The primary objective of the analysis is to determine how much of the difference in child outcomes at...