How Does Premarital Cohabitation Affect

LAURA TACH AND SARAH HALPERN-MEEKIN
Harvard University
How Does Premarital Cohabitation Affect Trajectories of Marital Quality?
We investigate the link between premarital cohabitation and trajectories of subsequent marital quality using random effects growth curve models and repeated measures of marital quality from married women in the NLSY-79 (N 3,598). We nd that premarital cohabitors experience lower quality marital relationships on average, but this is driven by cohabitors with nonmarital births. Premarital cohabitors without nonmarital births report the same marital quality as women who did not cohabit before marriage. Nonmarital childbearing is more strongly associated with lower subsequent marital quality for White women than for Black or Hispanic women. Marital quality declines at similar rates for all couples regardless of cohabitation or nonmarital childbearing status. These ndings are robust to numerous alternative model specications. Over the past several decades marriages have been increasingly preceded by cohabitation, and in the 1990s cohabitation became the majority premarital experience (Bumpass, Raley, & Sweet, 1995). As of the mid-1990s more than 60% of couples lived together before they married (Stanley, Whitton, & Markman, 2004), compared to about 10% in the mid-1970s (Bumpass & Lu, 2000). Given that the typical marriage now begins with cohabitation, it is essential to understand
Department of Sociology, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (tach@fas.harvard.edu). Key Words: cohabitation, marital quality, marriage, nonmarital childbearing.
what taking this pathway into marriage may mean for subsequent marital experiences. Previous research in this area has tended to focus on the robust correlation between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital dissolution and the potential explanations for this association (Axinn & Thornton, 1992; Dush, Cohan, & Amato, 2003; Hohmann-Marriott, 2006; Kline et al., 2004; Phillips & Sweeney, 2005; Stanley, Rhoades, & Markman, 2006; Teachman, 2003). This emphasis on marital dissolution ignores a variety of other important marital outcomes, such as marital quality, that may also be related to premarital cohabitation. This paper examines the relationship between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital quality. We build on previous work that shows a negative relationship between cohabitation and marital outcomes by investigating whether trajectories of marital quality are the same for all cohabitors. We differentiate between cohabitors who enter marriage with and without nonmarital children, and we further differentiate between those who cohabit or have nonmarital children with a future spouse or another partner. We also distinguish between rst versus higher order marriages, marriages that began before or after cohabitation was the majority experience (before vs. after 1990), relationships of short versus long duration, and marriages within different racial groups. Finally, we examine changes in relationship quality over time, rather than measuring differences in levels of reported quality at one or two points in time as most prior research has done. Our approach aims to more accurately reect the conuence of life events that inuence future marital experiences.
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Journal of Marriage and Family 71 (May 2009): 298317
Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories Cohabitation and Marital Outcomes Cohabitors tend to be less traditional, more individualistic, and more accepting of divorce than those who enter directly into marriage, and these factors are associated with future marital problems and union dissolution (Booth & Johnson, 1988; Brown & Booth, 1996; Lewis, Spanier, Atkinson, & LeHecka, 1977; Nock, 1995; Thomson & Colella, 1992). Family scholars have debated whether the disparities in relationship outcomes between cohabitors and noncohabitors are attributable to selection or experience (Axinn & Thornton, 1992; Bennett, Blanc, & Bloom, 1988; Dush et al., 2003; Lillard, Brien, & Waite, 1995; Thomson & Colella). The selection explanation maintains that cohabitors have characteristics that predispose them both to choose premarital cohabitation and to have lower quality marriages. The experience explanation suggests that the process of cohabitation itself causes couples to have lower quality marriages, above and beyond the characteristics that partners bring to the relationship. The most rigorous empirical analyses have used statistical techniques to account for all observed and unobserved differences between cohabitors and noncohabitors and have found that most of the disparities in marital dissolution can be attributed to selection rather than to a causal effect of cohabitation (Brown, Sanchez, Nock, & Wright, 2006; Elwert, 2005; Lillard et al.). We expect that controlling for a variety of characteristics known to be associated with the propensity to cohabit and to have lower marital quality will reduce the association between premarital cohabitation and marital quality. In this study we do not aim to settle the debate over whether the effects of cohabitation on marital outcomes are attributable to selection or experience, rather we provide estimates of the upper and lower bounds for each. Although it is impossible for us to capture all of the unmeasured differences between cohabitors and noncohabitors, the coefcient that remains after controlling for the characteristics we are able to measure provides a lower bound on the amount of the association that is attributable to selection. Conversely, this coefcient also provides an upper bound on the amount of the association that is attributable to a causal effect of the experience of cohabitation. There is an array of characteristics that contribute to the differences in marital outcomes between those who enter marriage directly and those who cohabit before marriage. Research
299 has shown that Blacks, Hispanics, premarital parents, the less religious, those with less education, those who experience more bouts of unemployment or have lower incomes, those raised outside of a two-married-parent family structure, and those who marry or have their rst child at younger ages are more likely to divorce (Amato, 1996; Booth & Johnson, 1988; Castro-Martin & Bumpass, 1989; Heaton & Pratt, 1990; Raley & Bumpass, 2003; Waite & Lillard, 1991; White & Rogers, 2000). Also, those in rural areas approach marital decisions differently because of more limited economic opportunities (McLaughlin & Lichter, 1993) and are also less likely to divorce compared to their urban counterparts (Sweezy & Tiefenthaler, 1996). Heterogeneity Among Cohabitors Cohabitors have become a more heterogeneous group as premarital cohabitation has become a more common experience. Recent studies have found that much of the increase in nonmarital childbearing over the past two decades can be attributed to births to cohabiting parents (Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Raley, 2001; Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2002). In 2004, about half of nonmarital births were to cohabiting parents (Kane & Lichter, 2006). Previous research has also established that premarital childbearing is a strong predictor of later marital disruption (Billy, Landale, & McLaughlin, 1986; Morgan & Rindfuss, 1985; Waite & Lillard, 1991). Graefe and Lichter (2002) found that at least one quarter of the marriages preceded by a premarital birth ended within 5 years. Additionally, women who had a premarital birth were about twice as likely to report poor marital quality as those who married without children (Timmer & Orbuch, 2001). For all couples, the stress of parenthood is a large source of declining marital satisfaction (Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003; Waite & Lillard). The effects of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing on subsequent marital quality may depend in part on whether they were experienced with the partner one ultimately marries or with a different partner. Divorce rates for those who cohabit only with a future spouse are substantially lower than they are for those who are serial cohabitors (Lichter & Qian, 2008). Teachman (2003) also found that premarital cohabitation with a future spouse was not predictive of elevated divorce risk, but those who engaged in nonmarital cohabitation that did not end in marriage were at
300 higher risk of divorcing a future spouse. These ndings may extend to marital quality outcomes, but this has not been directly examined. A similar effect may also exist for those with a premarital versus nonmarital birth. Whereas a premarital birth with a future spouse produces a two-biologicalparent family, a nonmarital birth followed by marriage to a different partner brings with it the complications of stepfamily arrangements. The effects of premarital experiences on marital outcomes may also vary by race. Phillips and Sweeney (2005) have shown that although premarital cohabitation is predictive of higher marital dissolution rates for non-Hispanic Whites (compared to their White counterparts who enter marriage directly), Black and Hispanic women do not face the same elevated risk. Graefe and Lichter (2002) found that a nonmarital birth was associated with higher subsequent marital instability for Whites and Hispanics (compared to their same-race counterparts who delayed childbearing until marriage), but not for Blacks. The evidence suggests, therefore, that White women may have stronger, more negative associations between their premarital experiences and their subsequent marital quality than their non-White counterparts. The negative impact of cohabitation or premarital childbearing on marital quality may also be limited to particular couples or particular types of marriages. Many previous studies indicate important areas of distinction: before and after these premarital experiences became commonplace during the 1990s, with decreased risks for those cohabiting in later years (de Vaus, Qu, & Weston, 2005; Dush et al., 2003); the impact of premarital experiences on rst marriages versus remarriages, with lower marital quality in remarriages preceded by cohabitation than in rst marriages with or without cohabitation (Skinner, Bahr, Crane, & Call, 2002); and distinctions between unions of long duration and lower quality marriages that quickly dissolve within the rst few years of marriage (Tach & Halpern-Meekin, 2008). Dividing the sample of cohabitors and premarital parents in these ways may reveal distinct associations between premarital experiences and subsequent marital quality for these different types of unions. Relationship Duration and Marital Quality Research on marital quality has shown a negative relationship between marital duration and satisfaction, with multiple studies demonstrating a downturn in quality over the rst few years of
Journal of Marriage and Family marriage (Glenn 1998; Johnson, Amoloza, & Booth, 1992; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Kurdek, 1998; Leonard & Roberts, 1998; Lindahl, Clements, & Markman, 1998). VanLaningham, Johnson, and Amato (2001) found sharp declines in marital quality over the rst few years of marriage, with declines continuing less rapidly over 50 years, adding up to more than a standard deviation decline in quality over the course of a marriage. Explanations for this decline have focused on the stresses of parenthood (Kurdek; Leonard & Roberts) as well as the dissipation of the honeymoon period following marriage (Glenn, 1996). This research on marital quality tends to focus on the wedding as the beginning of the relationship, however, which underestimates the true duration of the coresidential relationship for couples who cohabit before marrying (DeMaris & Rao, 1992). Increasingly couples are not having rst time experiences together after marriage but rather when they begin cohabiting. When these cohabiting couples marry, they change their legal status, not their living arrangements. Although a growing number of studies compare relationship quality between married and cohabiting couples (see, e.g., Musick & Bumpass, 2006; Skinner et al., 2002), research on the relationship between marital duration and marital satisfaction has not adequately taken into account the increasing prevalence of premarital cohabitation. Beginning observations of relationship quality at the start of a marriage may show cohabitors in a disadvantageous light, as their adjustment to living together began prior to the wedding (Brown, 2000b, 2003), and they may have already begun the decline in relationship quality observed within marriages over time. This hypothesis is consistent with Browns (2004) nding that relationship quality does not increase when cohabitors move into marriage. Similarly, beginning our observation of relationship quality at the start of a marriage may show premarital parents in a poor light because their unions are profoundly affected by their prior transition to parenthood. Starting the clock at the commencement of cohabitation or parenthood may put cohabitors and premarital parents on more equal footing with those who enter marriage directly without children. The Present Study This paper makes several contributions to the literatures on cohabitation and marriage. First, it moves beyond the focus on the relationship
Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories between cohabitation and marital dissolution to examine the consequences of premarital cohabitation for outcomes within marriage, specically marital quality. Second, we take into account heterogeneity within the group of premarital cohabitors, with particular attention paid to whether or not they experienced a nonmarital birth and whether their cohabitation spells or nonmarital births were with their future spouses or a different partner. Third, we utilize a more comprehensive framework for understanding the relationship between marital duration and marital quality by acknowledging that married couples who cohabit have been in coresidential relationships longer than couples who start living together when they marry, which could have distinct effects on how their marital quality changes over time. We similarly examine relationship quality from the start of coparenthood in recognition of the relationship changes premarital parents experience before marriage. Finally, we move away from static comparisons of relationship quality between cohabiting and married couples at a single point in time, which are plagued with problems of selection bias and unobserved group differences, to an examination of trajectories of marital quality within the same couples over time. This approach uses a longer series of marital quality measures than have typically been used in the past. On the basis of previous research, we expect to nd signicant negative associations between cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing and subsequent marital quality, and we expect that marital quality will decline over time for all groups. We also expect that differences in marital quality between those who enter marriage directly and premarital cohabitors and premarital parents will be minimized when we control for potential confounders and when we account for total relationship (or parenthood) duration instead of only marital duration. Finally, we expect that the differences between these groups will be smaller for rst marriages, for marriages that began after 1990 when cohabitation was more common, for marriages of longer duration, and for marriages among racial minorities. METHOD Data We address our research questions using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of
301 Youth 1979 Cohort (NLSY-79). The NLSY79 is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of 12,686 youth who were age 1422 in 1979. The survey reinterviewed these youth annually through 1994 and biannually through 2006. This data set has several advantages for the purposes of our study. First, it contains repeated measures of relationship quality every 2 years beginning in 1992, generating eight survey waves of data. Second, it contains detailed information on cohabitation and marriage over the study period, so we observe variation in the duration of marriages, rst marriages as well as remarriages, cohabitation spells, and nonmarital births. Although other studies have used the NLSY to look at the relationship between premarital cohabitation and subsequent divorce (Lichter & Qian, 2008; Teachman, 2003; Teachman & Polonko, 1990), to our knowledge no one has used the NLSY to look at relationship quality trajectories over time. The NLSY-79 began asking women about relationship quality with married or unmarried coresident partners in 1992, when the women were 27 to 35 years old, and then asked the same questions biannually in each subsequent survey wave. Relationship quality questions were asked only of women, so our initial sample consists of the 6,283 female NLSY respondents (50%). We further restrict our sample to female respondents who were married during at least one survey wave between 1992 and 2006 so that we have reports of their marital quality (N 3,848; 61%). Finally, we restrict the sample to women with nonmissing data on whether they cohabited with their husbands prior to marriage and whether they had a premarital birth (N 3,598; 94%). This results in a nal sample size of 3,598 respondents, with 20,117 person-year observations and an average of 5.5 observations per woman. In most cases, the amount of missing data on our other independent variables was small (less than 5%), so we impute missing values on other independent variables using single imputation techniques. The imputation model includes variables that are associated with either the dependent variable of interest, relationship quality, or the likelihood of having missing data (Allison, 2001). Although using the NLSY provides us with a long series of repeated observations of marital quality, an improvement over previous studies of marital quality that have only one or two data points per couple, this data set also has limitations
302 for this study. The rst observation of relationship quality does not come until 1992, when respondents were between 27 and 35 years of age. This means that we do not have observations of marital quality in the early years of marriages that began before 1992. We also do not observe any measures of marital quality for women who married and divorced prior to 1992, so our sample does not include these marriages. Because NLSY respondents were interviewed biannually after 1992, our sample also excludes marriages that lasted less than 2 years. Finally, because the NLSY only asked detailed cohabitation questions of the NLSY respondents, and not of their partners, our sample only captures the premarital experiences of these women; it therefore underestimates the prevalence of premarital cohabitation and childbearing. As a result, our conclusions only apply to womens reports of marital quality and premarital experiences, not to mens or to couples joint experiences. Measures Relationship quality. We used several measures to evaluate relationship quality among the couples in our sample. Women in the NLSY were asked a series of questions to gauge relationship quality every 2 years, starting in 1992, until the most recent survey wave available in 2006. This results in eight survey waves representing 16 potential years of marriage. At each wave, we created a global measure of Relationship Happiness based on the question Would you say that your marriage/relationship is . . . 3 very happy, 2 fairly happy, or 1 not too happy? with higher values indicating greater relationship satisfaction. We created a scale of Time Spent Together that combines the following three questions: How often do you and [spouse/partner] do the following: calmly discuss something; laugh together; tell each other about your day? Response categories are 4 almost every day, 3 once or twice a week, 2 once or twice a month, and 1 less than once a month. The reliability of this scale ranges from .73 to .80, depending on the survey wave. Our measure of Frequency of Argument asks, How frequently do you and [spouse/partner] do the following: have arguments about chores or responsibilities; have arguments about children; have arguments about money; have arguments about showing affection to each other; have arguments about leisure or free time; have arguments about
Journal of Marriage and Family drinking; have arguments about other women; have arguments about his relatives; have arguments about your relatives? Response categories are 4 often, 3 sometimes, 2 hardly ever, and 1 never. The reliability of this scale ranges from .74 to .89, depending on the survey wave. These three measures of relationship quality are moderately correlated with one another. Relationship Happiness correlates with Time Spent Together at about .5 and with Frequency of Argument at about .35. Time Spent Together and Frequency of Argument are correlated at about .25. These three measures capture both positive and negative aspects of marital quality, which Bradbury, Fincham, and Beach (2000) indicate is essential to accurately understanding marital quality. Additionally, they are similar to measures used in previous studies of marital quality (Amato & Rogers, 1999; Rogers & Amato, 1997; Thomson & Colella, 1992). Other relationship variables. Marital duration was measured as the number of years the respondent has been married to her spouse at each survey wave. We also used two alternate measures of duration, one that measures the number of years the respondent and her partner have been living together in either a marital or cohabiting union and one that measures the number of years since the respondent and her partner had their rst shared child in either a marital or cohabiting union. For each married respondent in our sample, we ascertained whether she cohabited with her current spouse prior to marriage and included this as a dummy variable called premarital cohabitation in our analyses. We also created a measure called cohabitation with other partner: whether the respondent ever reported living with a romantic partner, other than her present spouse, whom she did not later marry. We then determined whether the respondent and her current spouse had a child during the time they were cohabiting prior to marriage, called premarital birth. Finally, we determine whether the respondent ever had a child during a spell when she was not living with her present spouse and was unmarried, called nonmarital birth. This category includes births that occurred while women were living alone and while they were cohabiting with partners other than their current spouses. Because the NLSY does not directly ask about the paternity of children born to female respondents, we dene premarital births as those that occurred
Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories while the woman was cohabiting with her future spouse. Our measure therefore underestimates the number of premarital births because some of them will be coded as nonmarital if the woman and her future spouse were not living together at the time of the birth. Time-varying controls. Several time-varying controls are included in our models. These include economic well-being measured by the number of weeks the spouse worked and the number of weeks the respondent worked in the past year, which are both reported by the respondent, as well as a measure of annual family income from all sources in the past calendar year. We also included a count of the number of children the couple had in the household at each survey wave. Time-invariant controls. Exogenous family background variables included in our models were measured at 1979: whether the respondent lived in some family form other than a two-marriedparent family at age 14, whether the respondent lived in a nonrural location at age 14, and the religion in which the respondent was raisedCatholic, non-Catholic Christian, nonChristian religion, or no religion. We included the womans age at rst birth, age at rst marriage, and whether her present marriage is a remarriage (this is constant within a relationship spell in our models, but not necessarily within a respondent, as we may observe both her rst marriage and her remarriage). We included a measure for the length of time (in years) that cohabiting couples lived together before getting married, which is coded zero if the couple entered marriage directly. We also included controls for racenon-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White, or Hispanicand controls for the respondents educationless than high school, high school graduate, some college, and college degree or higher. Models We aimed to evaluate how premarital cohabitation and childbearing inuence both levels of and changes in marital quality. We structured the data set in a person-period format, in which we had multiple observations of reported relationship quality for NLSY respondents over time. We structured our data temporally, such that our observations of individuals began at the
303 survey wave in which we rst observed that the respondent was married and were censored after the marriage dissolved or after the last survey wave, whichever came rst. We estimated multilevel growth curve models with random effects, where observations of relationship quality are nested within individuals: Yit b0i 1 b1i Marital Durationt 1 eit b0i c00 1 c01 Ever Cohabitedi 1 c02 Any Nonmarital Birthi 1 a0i 2 b1i c10 1 c11 Ever Cohabited i 1 c12 Any Nonmarital Birthi 1 a1i 3 Equation (1) represents the within-individual model for change, where Yit indicates the reported marital quality for individual i in survey wave t, b0i represents the individual-specic level of marital quality when marital duration equals 0, at the start of marriage, and b1i represents the linear effect of marital duration on relationship quality within individuals. Goodness-of-t tests indicated that a linear functional form t the data best. Equation (2) models initial marital quality, b0i, as a function of cohabitation and nonmarital birth experiences, with c00 representing the initial marital quality of noncohabitors and c01 and c02 representing the difference between women who entered marriage directly and cohabitors and nonmarital parents, respectively, in initial marital quality. Finally, Equation (3) allows the association between marital duration and marital quality, b1i, to vary as a function of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing status, captured in c11 and c12. This series of models allows both initial levels of and changes over time in marital quality to vary by respondents cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing status. We evaluated the robustness of our models by specifying them in several alternative ways. First, we evaluated the sensitivity of the model to selection bias by comparing the associations between cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing and marital quality for women who had children or cohabited with their current spouse or with 1
304 someone other than their current spouse. If these different behaviors had similar associations with marital quality, we knew that at least part of this relationship was attributable to something other than the experience of cohabitation or nomarital childbearing with their current spouse. We also estimated the models including a series of control variables that are known to be associated with nonmarital childbearing, cohabitation, and relationship quality. Next, we determined whether the negative associations between cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing and marital quality were particular to certain types of marriages: rst versus higher order marriages, marriages that began before 1990 or after 1990 when cohabitation was more commonplace, and marriages that have lasted at least 10 years. We then reestimated these models separately by the race/ethnicity of the wife to account for potential racial or ethnic differences in the impact of these premarital experiences on subsequent marital quality. Finally, we took into account the fact that beginning our observations of relationship quality at the start of marriage, rather than at the start of a relationship, placed couples who had cohabited before marrying at a disadvantage relative to couples who entered marriage directly, given that relationship quality declines over time. To address this, we began observing relationship quality at the start of the coresidential relationship, rather than at the start of the marriage, and tracked time as the total relationship duration, rather than as the duration of the marriage. We took a similar approach to address the fact that relationship quality declines after children are born, and couples with premarital births enter marriage already having experienced the relationship adjustments of parenthood. In this case, we started observing relationship quality after the birth of the rst shared child, whether that child was born prior to marriage or after the couple married. With these alternative specications, we aimed to level the playing eld as much as possible for women who cohabited or had children before marrying. RESULTS Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for our sample of married women by cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing status. Consistent with previous research, women who cohabited, had a nonmarital birth, or both have less education, were more likely to grow up without two married
Journal of Marriage and Family parents in the home, and are less likely to be Catholic. Mothers who had a nonmarital birth are more likely to be Black, whereas women who did not are more likely to be White. Mothers who had a nonmarital birth also have younger ages at rst birth and older ages at rst marriage than women who did not. The average duration of cohabitation before marriage is 1.6 years for cohabitors without a premarital birth and 2.7 years for cohabitors with a premarital birth. Our sample contains multiple marriage spells for women if they marry more than once during our observation period. We observe higher order marriages for 20% of the women in our sample. Seventy-two percent of the women in our sample reported at least one spell of cohabitation, and 33% cohabited with their spouse before marrying him. Twenty-three percent reported any nonmarital birth, and 13% had a premarital birth with their future spouse. Seventy-ve percent of the women in our sample got married prior to 1990, whereas 25% reported a marriage that began after 1990. Finally, 85% of women reported being in marriages that had lasted at least 10 years. The average duration of the marriages observed in our sample was 17.1 years. For marriages that began prior to 1990, the mean duration was 21.7 years, and the mean duration was 8.7 years for marriages than began after 1990. This relatively high proportion of women with marriages of long duration is partly because of the construction of our sample, as it excludes marriages that dissolved before 1992 and marriages that lasted less than 2 years. It is also because the NLSY tracks women over a long period of time that covers the majority of the adult life span, and these numbers reect their cumulative marital attainment between 1979 and 2006. Tables 2 4 report the results from random effects growth curve models for each of our three measures of relationship quality. Table 2 shows the results for wives reports of subjective marital happiness. The initial variance components indicate that 47% of the total variation in reports of marital happiness is attributable to differences among women, and the remainder is attributable to differences within women over time. Model 1 compares the initial levels of and changes over time in marital happiness for women who have ever cohabited and women who have never cohabited. The intercept shows the level of marital happiness at the start of marriage for women who have never cohabited, and the following line shows the difference in initial levels of happiness
Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories

Table 1. Descriptive Characteristics of Married Women by Cohabitation and Nonmarital Birth Status (N 3,598) No Cohabitation or Nonmarital Birth (n 1,046) Variable Name Education Less than high school High school Some college College or higher Lived in nonrural setting at 14 Lived in two-married-parent family at 14 Religion Catholic Christian religion Other religion No religion Race Non-Hispanic White Black Hispanic Relationship characteristics Age at rst marriage Age at rst birth Second marriage observed Cohabitation duration (in years) Cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Time-varying characteristics a Weeks spouse worked a Weeks respondent worked a Number of children Annual family income a Marital quality Marital happiness Frequency of argument Time spent together M SD
305
Cohabitation Only (n 1,980) M SD
Nonmarital Birth (n 932) M SD
0.25 0.23 0.10 0.42 0.77 0.21 0.41 0.45 0.10 0.03 0.61 0.16 0.23 21.48 24.84 0.12 49.65 37.80 2.23 67,808.00 2.71 1.84 3.77 4.84 5.23
0.17 0.47 0.20 0.16 0.79 0.29 0.39 0.45 0.12 0.03 0.69 0.10 0.17 21.22 24.78 0.30 1.57 0.56 48.56 37.14 2.07 57,998.00 2.65 1.87 3.75 5.33 5.85 1.85
0.26 0.50 0.19 0.04 0.82 0.48 0.27 0.58 0.10 0.05 0.32 0.51 0.17 25.07 19.17 0.20 2.58 0.53 0.33 47.41 34.95 2.68 35,058.00 2.53 1.99 3.67 6.61 4.12 3.05
7.74 21.10 1.11 87,630.00 0.50 0.46 0.45
9.72 20.93 1.14 88,774.00 0.54 0.48 0.49
11.65 21.76 2.68 46,163.00 0.59 0.52 0.58
Note: Descriptive statistics are unweighted. Standard deviations are listed for continuous variables. a Time-varying variables are averaged across all person-year observations.
for women who have ever cohabited. The negative coefcient indicates that women who have ever cohabited start their marriages with signicantly lower reported levels of marital happiness. The years married coefcient shows the relationship between marital duration and relationship quality for noncohabitors, and the coefcient for cohabitors indicates whether this association is different for cohabitors and noncohabitors. Consistent with prior research, marital happiness declines over time for all groups. The marital hap-
piness of cohabitors does not decline at a signicantly different rate than the marital happiness of women who never cohabited. Model 2 makes the same comparisons for women who ever had a nonmarital birth and women who never did. Again, we nd that women who had any type of nonmarital birth began their marriages with signicantly lower levels of reported marital happiness than women who did not, but these two groups do not differ in their rate of marital happiness decline. Once we include the
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Table 2. Summary of Random Effects Growth Curve Models Predicting Trajectories of Wives Marital Happiness ( N 3,598)
All Marriages Remarriage First Marriage Married After 1990 Married Before 1990 Married 101 Years
Variable 2.829*** (.015) 2.818*** (.036) 2.887*** (.018) 2.795*** (.036) 2.836*** (.025) 2.843*** (.021)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 3 B (SE B)
Model 4 B (SE B)
Model 5 B (SE B)
Model 6 B (SE B)
Model 7 B (SE B)
Model 8 B (SE B)
Model 9 B (SE B) 2.882*** (.027)
2.847*** (.017) .108*** (.021) .021 (.020) .105** (.038) .004 (.030) (.053) (.049) (.046) .202*** (.031) .027*** (.003) .037 (.035) .014*** (.001) .016*** (.004) .010*** (.001) .224*** (.032) .136* .242*** (.054) .066y (.037) .134* .053 .150*** (.043) .015 (.037) (.023) (.027) (.042) .016 (.030) .151*** (.034) .005 (.026) .178*** (.025) .012*** (.001) .041 .063* .006 .079*
2.823*** (.013) .023 (.020) .187*** (.024)
(.033)
.041
(.033) .173*** (.047) .183*** (.036)
.231*** (.071) .015 (.044) .138*** (.046) .011*** (.001)
.017
(.041) .024*** (.004)
.013*** (.001) .001 (.001) .002 (.002) (.003) (.002) (.002) X .126 .093 .123 .119 .118 .030 .076 .136 .004 .002 .002 (.004) (.002) (.002) (.005) (.003) (.003) .003 .003 .000 .007 .004 .004 (.002) (.002) .007* .001 .001 .001 .002 .001 (.004) (.006) (.006) (.006)
.012*** (.001) .002 (.002) .001 (.002)
.001 .002 .001 .006
(.004) (.007) (.006) (.005)
.003 .001 .000 .003
(.002) (.005) (.003) (.003)
.001 .004 .003 .000
(.005) (.008) (.007) (.006)
InterceptStart of marriage Ever cohabited Any nonmarital birth Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Years married Ever cohabited Any nonmarital birth Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Model includes controls 2 Within-person R 2 Initial status R .122 .148 .104 .127
.126 .047
.126 .045
.047 .159
Journal of Marriage and Family
Note: Omitted reference category is wives who entered marriage directly without prior cohabitation or nonmarital childbearing. Models 1 4, N 3,598; Model 5, N 2,554; Model 6, N 1,032; Model 7, N 1,432; Model 8, N 2,545; and Model 9, N 2,348. Controls include age at rst birth, age at rst marriage, education (less than high school, some college, college plus, relative to high school graduates), raised in town or city (relative to rural), no religion, Catholic, or other religion (relative to other Christian religion), Black or Hispanic (relative to non-Black, non-Hispanics), growing up in a two-married-parent family, number of children, annual family income, weeks spouse worked in past year, and weeks respondent worked in past year. yp , .10. *p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.
Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories nonmarital birth indicator, the association between cohabitation and marital happiness is no longer signicant. Next, we distinguish between women who cohabited with their current spouse before marriage but did not have a premarital birth, women who cohabited with other partners but not their current spouse, women who had a premarital birth with their current spouse, and women who had a nonmarital birth with a partner who is not their current spouse. Model 3 examines the initial levels of marital happiness for these four groups, compared to women who entered marriage directly without ever cohabiting or having a nonmarital birth. Consistent with the ndings in Model 2, women who have only cohabited, either with their current spouse or someone else, do not report initial levels of marital happiness that are signicantly lower than women who entered marriage directly. Women who had a nonmarital birth do have signicantly lower initial levels of marital happiness, however, and this holds whether the nonmarital birth was with the current spouse or with someone else. The standard deviation of the marital happiness measure is 0.52, so women who have a pre- or nonmarital birth report levels of marital happiness that are about 0.3 standard deviations below women who entered marriage directly. The slope coefcients indicate that marital happiness declines at similar rates for all groups over time, so the initial differences in marital happiness between women with and without a nonmarital birth largely persist for the duration of the marriage. Are these differences between women with and without nonmarital births attributable to the selection of certain types of women into nonmarital childbearing and lower quality unions? Model 4 includes a series of time-constant and time-varying controls to account for the many ways in which these two groups of women differ from one another in their demographic, economic, and fertility characteristics. When these controls are added to the model, the magnitude of the negative effect for women with nonmarital births is reduced, but it remains statistically signicant for women who had premarital births with their current spouses. Women who only cohabited remain statistically indistinguishable from those who entered marriage directly. Women who have more children, are Black or Hispanic, or who work more have lower initial levels of marital happiness, whereas women who marry at older ages, who are college gradu-
307 ates, who have higher family incomes, and whose husbands work more report higher levels of marital happiness. These coefcients are not presented in the tables, but full results are available from the authors upon request. Are these results particular to certain marriages, to certain time periods, or to marriages of longer duration? In Models 5 and 6, we distinguish between women who are in their rst marriage and women who are remarried. It appears that the disadvantages in marital happiness associated with nonmarital births are stronger when women are in their rst marriages; the magnitude of these disparities is smaller among women who are in higher order marriages. There is also some suggestive evidence that women who have cohabited without having premarital births may report lower initial marital happiness than women who entered marriage directly when we restrict the sample to only rst marriages, but the magnitude of this effect is comparatively small. Next, we compare women who married before 1990 and those who married after 1990. The results in Models 7 and 8 are largely the same for these two groups, indicating that the disparities between women with and without nonmarital births are not particularly sensitive to the wifes age at marriage or to period effects. Cohabitation with another partner continues to have no substantive association with subsequent reports of marital happiness. In all of these models, the rate of decline in marital happiness over time is the same for the different groups of women. It is possible that the initial disparities in marital happiness between women with and without nonmarital births are attributable to a portion of the couples with nonmarital births who have quite negative relationships and divorce relatively quickly. Once we restrict the sample to women who have been married for the same minimum amount of time, these disparities may be smaller. We test this in Model 9, where we restrict the sample to women whose marriages lasted at least 10 years and observe the quality of their marriages during those rst 10 years. We nd that the disparities between these two groups are at least as large, if not larger, when we restrict the sample in this way, indicating that the negative results for women with nonmarital births are not primarily because of a select number of short-lived, low-quality unions. Overall, the results in Table 2 indicate that the disparities in marital happiness between cohabitors and noncohabitors are largely driven by
308
Table 3. Summary of Random Effects Growth Curve Models Predicting Trajectories of Wives Frequency of Argument With Their Spouses ( N 3,598)
First Marriage Remarriage Married After 1990 Married Before1990 Married 101 Years
All Marriages
Variable 1.889*** (.016) 1.942*** (.034) 1.958*** (.019) 1.723*** (.039) 1.655*** (.026) 2.004*** (.026)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 3 B (SE B)
Model 4 B (SE B)
Model 5 B (SE B)
Model 6 B (SE B)
Model 7 B (SE B)
Model 8 B (SE B)
Model 9 B (SE B) 1.744*** (.029)
1.913*** (.018) .021** (.009) .046* .112** (.033) .075* (.026) (.027) .005*** (.001) .003 (.003) .006*** (.001) .010** (.003) .022 (.035) .079* (.034) .027 (.049) .139*** (.033) (.030) .000 (.037) (.052) (.039) .062* .004*** (.001) .078* .073 .030 .058* (.026) .187** (.057) .247*** (.056) .300*** (.043) (.020) .049* (.023) .016 (.028) .123** (.045) .132*** (.030) .130*** (.031) .212*** (.066) .069y (.041) .091* (.044) .009*** (.001)
1.913*** (.019) .013 (.023) .102*** (.026)
.105** (.035) .209*** (.049) .123*** (.043) .098* (.040) .015*** (.004)
.003** (.001) .009 (.021) .000 .002 .005* .002 X .155 .020 .157 .021 .103 .035 .079 .019 .103 .141 (.002) .003 (.002) .000 (.002) .005 (.002) .005* (.002) .000 (.002) .002 (.003) .003 (.003) .002 (.004) .007 (.006) (.005) (.005) (.001) .001 (.002) .001 (.002) (.004) .008* .004 .009 .005 .005
.003** (.001) .000 (.001) .000 (.002)
(.004) (.006) (.005) (.004)
.005** (.002) .005 (.004) .004y (.002) .000 (.003)
.006 .009 .013* .002
(.005) (.007) (.006) (.006)
InterceptStart of marriage Ever cohabited Any nonmarital birth Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Years married Ever cohabited Any nonmarital birth Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Model includes controls 2 Within-person R 2 Initial status R .103 .042
.153 .011
.156 .011
.069 .027
Table 4. Summary of Random Effects Growth Curve Models Predicting Trajectories of Wives Time Together With Their Spouses ( N 3,598)
All Marriages First Marriage Remarriage Married After 1990 Married Before 1990 Married 101 Years
Variable 2.832*** (.014) 3.797*** (.032) 3.855*** (.017) 3.845*** (.033) 3.868*** (.023)
Model 1 B (SE B) 3.820*** (.019)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 3 B (SE B)
Model 4 B (SE B)
Model 5 B (SE B)
Model 6 B (SE B)
Model 7 B (SE B)
Model 8 B (SE B)
Model 9 B (SE B) 3.911*** (.026)
2.833*** (.016) .048* (.019) .002 (.019) (.032) (.025) .020 (.032) .007*** (.001) .010** (.003) (.042) .005*** (.001) .215*** (.030) .059 .009 (.027) .034 (.034) .012 (.046) .030 (.035) .039 (.034) (.050) (.049) .106* .119* .139*** (.040) (.021) (.025) (.039) (.028) .070* .048* .164*** (.024) .007*** (.001) .023 .005 .051 .011 .030 .055 .008
2.854*** (.017) .032 (.021) .153*** (.023)
(.031) (.066) (.041) .186*** (.043) .006*** (.001)
.067*
(.031) .165*** (.044) .011 (.039) .150*** (.034) .019*** (.004)
.153*** (.029) .015*** (.003)
.007*** (.001) .000 (.001) .002 (.002) (.003) (.002) (.002) X .123 .160 .228 .186 .093 .202 .052 .237 .002 (.002) .001 (.002) .002 (.002) (.003) .003 .006* (.003) (.004) .011* .001 .000 .006 (.002) (.002) .002 .007* .003 .001 .001 .003 (.004) (.006) (.005) (.006)
.007*** (.001) .000 (.002) .002 (.002)
.000 .000 .003 .001
(.004) (.006) (.005) (.005)
.001
(.002) .009y (.005) .001 .001 (.003) (.003)
.007 .004 .002 .008
(.005) (.007) (.006) (.006)
InterceptStart of marriage Ever cohabited Any nonmarital birth Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Years married Ever cohabited Any nonmarital birth Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Model includes controls 2 Within-person R 2 Initial status R .072 .334 .088 .154
.122 .121
.122 .121
.096 .215
309
310 cohabitors who have nonmarital births. These disparities are equally negative for women who had a premarital birth with their current spouse and women who had a nonmarital birth with someone else. The differences between women with and without premarital births are mitigated, but not erased, when we control for economic and demographic differences between the two groups, but the differences are no longer signicant for women who had a nonmarital birth with a previous partner. These effects are slightly stronger for rst marriages than for remarriages and for marriages of longer durations, but there are no indications of large period or age effects. Finally, marital happiness declines at similar rates for all women regardless of cohabitation and childbearing status, meaning that the initial disparities in happiness persist for the duration of the marriage. Next, we repeat the same analyses for our other two measures of marital quality: frequency of arguing and time spent together. In Table 3, we present the results for frequency of arguing. The results are largely the same for this measure as the results for marital happiness presented in Table 2. Forty-nine percent of the variation in reports of arguing lies among different women, and the remainder lies within women over time. Both women who have ever cohabited and women who have had a nonmarital birth report more frequent arguing than women who have not, but again this result is driven by nonmarital births. When we distinguish between cohabitations and births with current spouses versus someone else in Model 3, we see that women with both premarital and nonmarital births report more frequent arguing; women who have premarital births report a level of arguing that is 0.24 SD above women who entered marriage directly, and the reports of women with nonmarital births are 0.13 SD above women who entered marriage directly. One difference between the results for marital happiness and this measure of frequency of arguing is that women report more frequent arguing if they cohabited with their current spouse before marrying them, but not if they cohabited with someone besides their current partner. This pattern remains when we include the series of control variables in Model 4 to account for the observed differences between the groups of women. There are also no consistent differences in frequency of arguing between rst and second marriages, unlike the results for the measure of marital happiness. The results for the two measures are similar for the other model
Journal of Marriage and Family specications, including marriages starting before or after 1990, where there are no consistent differences between these two types of marriages, and for marriages of longer durations, where the increased frequency of argument is at least as strong when we restrict the sample to marriages that lasted at least 10 years. Finally, similar to the measure of marital happiness, the main difference between these groups is in the initial levels of argument, and this frequency increases at similar rates over time for all groups. In Table 4, we present the results for our third measure of marital quality: time spent together. The results for this measure are largely the same as they were for our measure of marital happiness. Thirty-nine percent of the variation in reports of time spent together is attributable to differences among women, and the remainder is attributable to variation in within-individual reports over time. The negative association between cohabitation and time spent together is mainly driven by those cohabitors who had a nonmarital birth, whether that birth was with the current spouse or someone else. Compared to women who entered marriage directly, women with a premarital birth report levels of time spent together that are 0.15 SD lower and women with nonmarital births report levels that are 0.35 SD lower. Most of these differences are explained by the control variables in Model 4. The disparities are stronger for marriages that lasted at least 10 years, but there is little difference on the basis of whether the marriage began before or after 1990, except for premarital births. Finally, there are no consistent signicant differences in slopes between these groups; the initial disparities persist throughout the marriage. Table 5 presents results separately for nonHispanic Blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic Whites. As in Tables 2 4, we nd that there are no signicant differences in the negative association between marital duration and marital quality for cohabitors, nonmarital parents, and those who entered marriage directly, so we only present the results for the differences in initial levels of marital quality in Table 5 (results for changes over time are available upon request). There are few signicant differences in levels of relationship quality among Black or Hispanic women based on their cohabitation or nonmarital birth experiences. For these two groups, women who cohabit or have nonmarital births do not report signicantly lower levels of relationship

Table 5. Summary of Random Effects Growth Curve Models Predicting Wives Marital Quality by Race ( N 3,598)
Blacks Model 1 B (SE B) Model 2 B (SE B) Hispanics Model 1 B (SE B) Model 2 B (SE B) Whites Model 1 B (SE B)
311
Variable Marital happiness Intercept Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Frequency of argument Intercept Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Time spent together Intercept Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Model includes controls
Model 2 B (SE B)
2.714*** (.038) 2.720*** (.091) 2.767*** (.035) 2.786*** (.101) 2.881*** (.019) 2.815*** (.043) .012 (.047) .049 (.058) .004 (.048) .001 (.053) .0451 (.025) .059* (.028) .054 .078 .106* (.070) (.062) (.046) .099 .059 .033 (.088) .097 (.076) .040 (.069) .042 (.074) .114 (.084) .182*** (.045) .172*** (.050) (.057) .037 (.064) .029 (.033) .015 (.037) (.057) .095y (.073) .221*** (.046) .131*** (.055)
1.945*** (.041) 2.028*** (.059) 1.903*** (.036) 1.955*** (.103) 1.865*** (.019) 1.954*** (.040) .054 (.049) .039 (.059) .001 (.048) .037 (.055) .067** (.025) .058* (.027) .102 .133* .045 (.072) .041 (.065) .122* (.049) .157* (.089) .185* (.079) .071 (.071) .071 (.074) .192* (.058) .050 (.061) .032 (.086) .073y (.043) .006 (.048) (.067) .055y (.033) .077y (.037) (.077) .002 (.047) .014 (.055)
3.771*** (.042) 3.775*** (.096) 3.807*** (.033) 3.793*** (.094) 3.858*** (.016) 3.762*** (.037) .004 (.052) .080 (.061) .018 (.046) .010 (.049) .004 (.022) .003 (.023) .036 (.077) .029 .035 (.067) .007 .135** (.050) .026 X (.093) .149* (.079) .126* (.073) .043 (.071) .188* (.054) .051 (.053) .014 X (.078) .038 (.039) .014 (.042) (.059) .009 (.029) .002 (.031) (.067) .183*** (.039) .082y (.046) X
Note: N 786 Blacks, 741 Hispanics, and 2,071 Whites. Omitted reference category is wives who entered marriage directly without prior cohabitation or nonmarital childbearing. Slopes estimating changes in marital quality by relationship duration did not differ signicantly across racial groups and are not presented here. Controls include age at rst birth, age at rst marriage, education (less than high school, some college, college plus, relative to high school graduates), raised in town or city (relative to rural), no religion, Catholic, or other religion (relative to other Christian religion), growing up in a two-married-parent family, number of children, annual family income, weeks spouse worked in past year, and weeks respondent worked in past year. yp , .10 *p , .05. **p , .01 ***p , .001.
quality than women who enter marriage directly. The one exception is Hispanic wives with nonmarital births, who report more arguing and less time spent together. In contrast, White women report signicantly different levels of marital quality depending on their premarital experiences, particularly their experience of having a nonmarital or premarital birth. White women who have a nonmarital or premarital birth report signicantly lower levels of marital quality than White women who enter marriage directly. Comparing the magnitudes of the coefcients across the three racial groups, we nd that these racial differences are driven mainly by the higher reported marital quality of White women who enter marriage directly, compared to Black or Hispanic women who enter marriage directly. These results persist with the inclusion of control variables in Model 2 for each racial group.
Tables 2 5 measure relationship duration from the start of marriage. This places couples who have cohabited at a potential disadvantage, however, because they have been in cohabiting relationships prior to the beginning of their marriages. If relationship quality declines over time, starting the clock at the beginning of a marriage may show that premarital cohabitors have lower quality relationships simply because they have been in them longer. If this is the case, starting the clock at the beginning of a coresidential relationship, rather than at the start of the marriage, may result in smaller disparities between premarital cohabitors and women who entered marriage directly without children. We test this in Table 6. In the rst set of models, we take each of our three measures of relationship quality and observe the couples when they rst start living together and we track the duration of their unions from the start
312
Table 6. Summary of Random Effects Growth Curve Models Predicting Wives Relationship Quality From Start of Cohabiting Relationship and Birth of Shared Child (N 3,598)
Start of Shared Childbearing Time Spent Together Relationship Happiness Frequency of Argument Time Spent Together
Start of Cohabiting Relationship
Relationship Happiness
Frequency of Argument
Variable 1.908*** (.033) .095*** (.023)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
Model 1 B (SE B)
Model 2 B (SE B)
2.784*** (.016) .041y (.021)
2.778*** (.035) .014 (.024)
1.865*** (.015) .080*** (.020)
3.826*** (.014) 3.781*** (.032) 2.838*** (.018) 2.741*** (.051) 1.951*** (.019) 2.041*** (.049) 3.840*** (.016) 3.651*** (.045) .014 (.020) .003 (.021) .048y (.027) .049y (.029) .017 (.029) .002 (.030) .042y (.024) .045y (.025)
.071y (.041) .034 .021 .004 (.036) 0.186*** (.025) .064y (.032) .091 .182*** (.041) .092y (.053) (.031) .029 (.026) .004 (.028) .006 (.035) .035 (.039) .033 (.043) (.038) .015 .153** (.053)
.057
(.045)
.080*** (.039)
.008
(.041) .218*** (.052) .157** (.058)
.006
(.059) .105* (.040) .009
(.046) .075 (.031) .023 (.055) .212*** (.037) .109*
(.051) (.034) (.046)
.027
(.028)
.005
(.031)
.010
(.027)
(.037) .045 (.044) .049
.187*** (.027) .045
(.036)
.066*
(.028)
.010*** (.001) .008*** (.001) .002y (.001) .003* (.001) .005** (.002) .004* (.002) .002 (.001) .003y (.002)
.007*** (.001) .005y (.001) .012*** (.001) .007*** (.002) .005*** (.001) .010*** (.002) .007*** (.001) .005** (.002) .001 (.002) .001 (.002) .002 (.002) .001 (.003) .000 (.002) .000 (.002) .001 (.002) .000 (.002)
.006y (.003) .006* (.002) (.002) X X .002 (.002) .002 (.002) .001 .002 (.002) .002 (.002) .001 (.003) (.004) (.003) .003 (.004)
.001
(.003)
0.005y (.003)
.007*
(.003) .005y (.003)
.002 .000 .003 X
(.004) .004 (.003) (.004) .000 .005
(.004) .004 (.003) (.004) .001 .006 X
(.005) (.003) (.004)
.001 .000 .004
(.004) (.003) (.003)
.002 .002 .004 X
(.004) (.003) (.004)
.001 .002
(.002)
.001
(.002) .001
(.002) .002
Intercept Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Years in relationship Premarital cohabitation with spouse Premarital birth with spouse Cohabitation with other partner Nonmarital birth with other partner Model includes controls
.001
(.002) .001
(.003)
.002
(.002)
Notes: Models for shared childbearing are estimated on the 2,437 women who report having a child while in one of these types of relationships. Omitted reference category is wives who entered marriage directly without cohabiting or having a nonmarital birth. Controls include age at rst birth, age at rst marriage, education (less than high school, some college, college plus, relative to high school graduates), raised in town or city (relative to rural), no religion, Catholic, or other religion (relative to other Christian religions), Black or Hispanic (relative to non-Black, non-Hispanic), race and ethnicity, growing up in two-married-parent family, number of children, annual family income, weeks spouse worked in past year, and weeks respondent worked in past year. yp , .10 *p , .05. **p , .01 ***p , .001.
Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories of the coresidential relationship rather than from the start of marriage. When we do this, we nd that the more negative initial relationship quality for women who had a premarital or a nonmarital birth is reduced, compared to when we observed them from the beginning of their marriages, and few signicant differences remain after the inclusion of controls. Women who cohabited remain statistically indistinguishable from women who entered marriage directly in their initial levels of marital happiness and time spent together. Women who cohabited with their spouses, however, start their coresidential relationships with more frequent arguing than women who entered marriage directly, and this result remains the same whether we begin observing them at the start of marriage or at the start of their coresidential relationships. For all measures and all model specications, the main differences between groups are in the initial levels of relationship quality, not in the rates of decline over time. Previous research has shown that marital quality declines after a child is born (Belsky & Kelly, 1994; Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Glenn & McLanahan, 1982). If this is the case, our previous models may still place women with a nonmarital birth at a disadvantage because they are being compared to women who have not yet had children. To address how much this affects our results, we respecify the models so that we start observing relationship quality for women at the time they have their rst shared child with their current spouse, whether this occurred within a marital or a cohabiting union. The second set of models in Table 5 shows the output for our three measures of marital quality when we start the clock at the time of the rst shared childs birth and track changes in marital quality after that point in time. Women with no children drop out of these models. Contrary to the expectation that differences would be mitigated, we nd that, if anything, relationship quality is even worse for women following a nonmarital birth than it is for women after a marital birth. These disparities are greatly reduced after the inclusion of controls in Model 2, similar to our results when we start the clock at the beginning of the cohabiting relationship. There are no differences in marital quality at the time of the rst childs birth for women who cohabited before marriage, relative to those who did not. These results hold for all three measures of relationship quality. DISCUSSION
313
Our analyses indicate that it is not premarital cohabitation alone that inuences the quality of marriages but rather premarital childbearing. The negative correlation between premarital cohabitation and marital quality is largely driven by the nonmarital parents in the cohabiting population. Any nonmarital birth, whether with a future spouse or someone else, is associated with poorer future marital quality. Furthermore, marital quality is locked in at the start of marriage, with lower quality marriages neither catching up nor deteriorating more rapidly than others. The negative association between premarital childbearing and marital quality is strongest for White women, which is partly because of the high initial levels of reported marital quality among White women who enter marriage directly; White women appear to benet the most in terms of marital quality by delaying their childbearing until after marriage. These results are consistent with previous research showing that Black women report lower marital quality, on average, than White women (Adelman, Chadwick, & Baerger, 1996). Although we cannot draw strong conclusions about the relative impact of selection versus experience on marital quality, our models do indicate the upper and lower bounds of these effects. In Tables 2 4, the coefcients for those who had a nonmarital birth with another partner become small and insignicant with the inclusion of controls. This suggests that the negative association between a nonmarital birth and marital quality could be due entirely to selection. This does not appear to be the case for those with a premarital birth, for whom coefcients are reduced but typically remain statistically signicant; this indicates that the selection factors we measured do not totally account for this groups poorer marital quality outcomes. For this group, the models including controls have coefcients that are about half the size as the models without controls, which suggests that at least half the association between premarital childbearing and marital quality is attributable to selection and at most half is attributable to experience. When we start the clock at the beginning of the cohabiting or parenting relationship and include our set of controls, differences between premarital parents and couples who entered marriage directly are no longer signicant. For premarital parents, then, it is a combination of selection
314 and experience that explains their distinctive outcomes. Alternative sample specications do not greatly change the overall nding of poorer marital quality for premarital parents. There are no period or age differences detectable, and effects are actually stronger when the sample is restricted to longer marriages. Contrary to the expectations of previous research, however, there is an indication that those who cohabited or had a premarital birth are more disadvantaged in rst marriages than in remarriages. This may be indicative of the greater acceptance of premarital experiences in remarriages, in which the expectation of a clean slate would be unrealistic. This nding is also partly driven by the fact that women in our sample who enter remarriages directly report lower marital quality than women who enter rst marriages directly. We nd that lower marital quality among women who have had a premarital birth is explained partly by selection and partly by experience. Future research should explore in greater detail the process by which partners personal characteristics and the experience of living together in a nonmarital union generate lower quality relationships. Existing qualitative research provides some indications of these processes, including sexual jealousy and indelity (Hill, 2007), gender mistrust and conict over childrearing (England & Schafer, 2007), and the strain induced by nancial hardship (GibsonDavis, 2007). These processes can be examined in quantitative data as well. For example, Brown (2000a) has shown that among cohabitors, only those with children are at higher risk for depression. Mothers who suffer from depression may be more likely to perceive their marriages as troubled or to have unions that are negatively affected by their struggles with mental health. The racial differences in the association between premarital experiences and marital quality should also be more fully explored in order to understand why delaying coresidence and childbearing until after marriage is more protective for White women than for Black or Hispanic women. Of course, our study is not without limitations. The main limitation is that the structure of the NLSY only allows us to observe one cohort of women. We also cannot observe relationship quality among women at younger ages because the survey did not begin asking relevant questions until 1992, when the women were 27 to 35 years old. Future work should determine if our results hold up with different samples of
Journal of Marriage and Family women. Because our sample is limited to reports of premarital experiences and relationship quality from female respondents, we do not know whether our conclusions accurately describe the effects of mens premarital experiences on marital quality (Bernard, 1972). Previous studies of gender differences in marital quality reporting, however, give us a measure of condence in relying on wives reports of marital quality. For example, Amato and Rogers (1997) found no interaction between gender and marital problem reporting in the prediction of later divorce. Amato and Rogers (1999) also found no gender differences in the association between relationship commitment attitudes and marital quality. In addition, we acknowledge the possibility that our ndings might be sensitive to systematic differences in how women with different premarital experiences report on their marital quality. Finally, we recognize that noncohabitors, cohabitors, and nonmarital parents select into marriage at different rates, so the sample we use in this paper cannot be generalized to cohabitors and nonmarital parents who do not marry. Lastly, the policy implications of our ndings must be briey discussed. Federal and state efforts to promote marriage, particularly among unmarried parents, must proceed cautiously. Despite substantial variation within and across family types, research consistently shows that children in two-married-parent families have better academic, psychological, and behavioral outcomes compared to those being raised in never-married, divorced, and stepfamily households (Amato, 2005; Amato & Keith, 1991a, 1991b; Case, Lin, & McLanahan, 1999; Halpern-Meekin & Tach, 2008; Hetherington, 1993; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Our ndings indicate that even among two-married-parent families, those who have had a child before marrying seem to have qualitatively different relationships than those who have not, which is because of the characteristics they bring to the relationship and their experiences within cohabiting and parenting relationships prior to marriage. If unmarried couples with children are to marry, there is a greater incidence of marital dissatisfaction, arguing, and lack of quality couple time in this population, to which marriage and relationship interventions must be sensitive. NOTE
We appreciate helpful comments from Sharon Sassler, Julie Brines, and Peter Stein. Previous versions of this paper were

presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Association in New York, the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America in New Orleans, and the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Boston. Both authors were supported by funding from a National Science Foundation IGERT Training Grant awarded to the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy at Harvard University while conducting this research. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). The NLSY79 survey is sponsored and directed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by the Center for Human Resource Research at The Ohio State University. Interviews are conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
315
Bernard, J. (1972). The future of marriage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Billy, J. O. G., Landale, N. S., & McLaughlin, S. D. (1986). The effect of marital status at rst birth on marital dissolution among adolescent mothers. Demography, 23, 329 349. Booth, A., & Johnson, D. R. (1988). Premarital cohabitation and marital success. Journal of Family Issues, 9, 255 272. Bradbury, T. N., Fincham, F. D., & Beach, S. R. H. (2000). Research on the nature and determinants of marital satisfaction: A decade in review. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 964 980. Brown, S. L. (2000a). The effect of union type on psychological well-being: Depression among cohabitors versus marrieds. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 41, 244 255. Brown, S. L. (2000b). Union transitions among cohabitors: The signicance of relationship assessments and expectations. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 833 846. Brown, S. L. (2003). Relationship quality dynamics of cohabiting unions. Journal of Family Issues, 24, 583 601. Brown, S. L. (2004). Moving from cohabitation to marriage: Effects on relationship quality. Social Science Research, 33, 1 19. Brown, S. L., & Booth, A. (1996). Cohabitation versus marriage: A comparison of relationship quality. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 668 678. Brown, S. L., Sanchez, L. A., Nock, S. L., & Wright, J. D. (2006). Links between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital quality, stability, and divorce: A comparison of covenant versus standard marriages. Social Science Research, 35, 454 470. Bumpass, L. L., & Lu, H.-H. (2000). Trends in cohabitation and implications for childrens family contexts in the United States. Population Studies, 54, 29 41. Bumpass, L. L., Raley, R. K., & Sweet, J. A. (1995). The changing character of stepfamilies: Implications of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing. Demography, 32, 425 436. Case, A., Lin, I.-F, & McLanahan, S. (1999). Household resource allocation in stepfamilies: Darwin reects on the plight of Cinderella. American Economic Review, 89, 234 238. Castro-Martin, T., & Bumpass, L. L. (1989). Recent trends and differentials in marital disruption. Demography, 26, 37 51. Cowan, C. P., & Cowan, P. A. (1992). When partners become parents: The big life change for couples. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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LAURA TACH AND SARAH HALPERN-MEEKIN

How Does Premarital Cohabitation Affect Trajectories of Marital Quality?

Journal of Marriage and Family 71 (May 2009): 298317

Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories

Cohabitation Only (n 1,980) M SD

Nonmarital Birth (n 932) M SD

7.74 21.10 1.11 87,630.00 0.50 0.46 0.45

9.72 20.93 1.14 88,774.00 0.54 0.48 0.49

11.65 21.76 2.68 46,163.00 0.59 0.52 0.58

Model 9 B (SE B) 2.882*** (.027)

2.823*** (.013) .023 (.020) .187*** (.024)

(.033) .173*** (.047) .183*** (.036)

.231*** (.071) .015 (.044) .138*** (.046) .011*** (.001)

(.041) .024*** (.004)

.012*** (.001) .002 (.002) .001 (.002)

.001 .002 .001 .006

(.004) (.007) (.006) (.005)

.003 .001 .000 .003

(.002) (.005) (.003) (.003)

.001 .004 .003 .000

(.005) (.008) (.007) (.006)

Journal of Marriage and Family

Model 9 B (SE B) 1.744*** (.029)

1.913*** (.019) .013 (.023) .102*** (.026)

.003** (.001) .000 (.001) .000 (.002)

(.004) (.006) (.005) (.004)

.005** (.002) .005 (.004) .004y (.002) .000 (.003)

.006 .009 .013* .002

(.005) (.007) (.006) (.006)

Journal of Marriage and Family

Model 1 B (SE B) 3.820*** (.019)

Model 9 B (SE B) 3.911*** (.026)

2.854*** (.017) .032 (.021) .153*** (.023)

(.031) (.066) (.041) .186*** (.043) .006*** (.001)

(.031) .165*** (.044) .011 (.039) .150*** (.034) .019*** (.004)

Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories

.153*** (.029) .015*** (.003)

.007*** (.001) .000 (.002) .002 (.002)

.000 .000 .003 .001

(.004) (.006) (.005) (.005)

(.002) .009y (.005) .001 .001 (.003) (.003)

.007 .004 .002 .008

(.005) (.007) (.006) (.006)

Cohabitation and Marital Quality Trajectories

Start of Cohabiting Relationship

Variable 1.908*** (.033) .095*** (.023)

2.784*** (.016) .041y (.021)

2.778*** (.035) .014 (.024)

1.865*** (.015) .080*** (.020)

(.041) .218*** (.052) .157** (.058)

(.059) .105* (.040) .009

(.046) .075 (.031) .023 (.055) .212*** (.037) .109*

(.051) (.034) (.046)

(.037) .045 (.044) .049

.187*** (.027) .045

(.003) .005y (.003)

.002 .000 .003 X

(.004) .004 (.003) (.004) .000 .005

(.004) .004 (.003) (.004) .001 .006 X

(.005) (.003) (.004)

.001 .000 .004

(.004) (.003) (.003)

.002 .002 .004 X

2.823* (.013) .023 (.020) .187* (.024)

(.033) .173* (.047) .183* (.036)

.231* (.071) .015 (.044) .138* (.046) .011*** (.001)

1.913* (.019) .013 (.023) .102* (.026)

2.854* (.017) .032 (.021) .153* (.023)

(.031) (.066) (.041) .186* (.043) .006* (.001)

(.031) .165* (.044) .011 (.039) .150* (.034) .019*** (.004)

.153* (.029) .015* (.003)

Variable 1.908* (.033) .095* (.023)

1.865* (.015) .080* (.020)

(.041) .218* (.052) .157 (.058)