Another Downside of Cohabitation

While increasing numbers of young people, and especially young women, think that cohabitation prepares a couple for matrimony, a study by sociologist David Eggebeen at Penn State University suggests that living together without a wedding band may thwart the kind of intergenerational ties that often make for a successful marriage or relationship.

Eggebeen parsed data from the first wave (1987-88) of the National Survey of Families and Households, limiting his analysis to more than 3,800 young adult respondents (ages 19-30) who have at least one living parent. He found that cohabitants are significantly less likely to be — relative to their married peers — in “exchange relationships” with parents. They are less likely to give help to their parents (p < .10), to receive help from their parents (p < .05), and to turn to their parents in an emergency (p < .01).

The correlation held true even in tests that controlled for a variety of characteristics of the young adults, their parents, and the relationships between them. Those characteristics included the extent of parental contact, eliminating the possibility that the pattern was due to cohabitants having a distant or strained relationship with their parents. Furthermore, the exchange dynamic weakened the longer a couple cohabited, a finding contrary to what Eggebeen had anticipated.

Given that “receiving parental support” was the starkest difference between married and cohabiting couples, the sociologist theorizes that parents — unsure of their role when their children cohabit — might simply retreat from their children. But he also speculates that cohabitants may place fewer demands on parents and, relative to their married peers, are less likely to participate in extended family activities, including vacations, holidays, and special events.

Eggebeen laments these negative associations with cohabitation, as they do little to help twenty-somethings navigate life transitions and difficulties. But he is reluctant to see a causal relationship, as selection factors may be at work among those who cohabit. This unwillingness to scrutinize cohabitation is unfortunate, as it leads to the implication — typical in the sociology guild — that everybody else, including parents, should “do more” to adjust to these new realities when the reverse may represent a better response: that cohabitants rethink their life choices, change their behavior, and get with the family program.

(Source: David J. Eggebeen, “Cohabitation and Exchanges of Support,” Social Forces 83 [March 2005]: 1097-1110.)

Cohabitation and Inequality  

Feminists claim that cohabitation is more egalitarian and democratic than marriage. Yet has the increase in the practice of cohabitation delivered greater levels of equality among cohabitants? Looking at how married and cohabiting households manage their financial assets, a review of the research by Carolyn Vogler suggests that cohabitation represents a mixed bag and that marriage can yield greater economic fairness for women.

Looking at several data sources, including the 1987 Social Change and Economic Life Initiative and the British Household Panel Study (1991-95), Vogler found that most married couples in Britain function more or less as single economic units, using one of three systems identified by British sociologist Jan Pahl: a joint pooling system where both husband and wife manage money jointly; a system where the wife largely manages the pooled money; or a system where the husband largely manages the pooled money. Although recognizing that variation exists among married couples, she notes that the “jointness” of all three of these arrangements tends to mediate or accommodate (or in her view “mask”) the reality, in most cases, of the wife’s financial dependence on the husband.

Analyzing studies in Germany, Australia, United States, and Sweden, Vogler found that cohabiting couples handle money very differently. Claiming to organize their finances on principles of equality, these couples adopt what Pahl calls “privatized” systems, functioning largely as two separate, autonomous units, with each partner keeping his or her own checkbook as would college buddies sharing an apartment. As long as the man and woman earn roughly the same, the partial pool or independent management systems yield relative peace. But because men tend to earn more than women and have significantly more assets in their name, these “inequalities” become more visible and more pronounced, often destabilizing cohabiting relationships while yielding the opposite effect on married couples. As Vogel puts it, the money systems used by cohabitants correlate with “significant greater inequalities” expressed in an impersonal “marketized” form.

This has led some to claim that the source of inequality is less the form of intimate relationship than the traditional gender roles that men and women bring into such relationships, whether marriage or cohabitation. As Vogler points out, egalitarian couples (whether married or cohabiting) who reject the male breadwinner role can’t seem to shake it, as they end up delegating the role of managing the household and caring for children to the woman. Furthermore, once cohabiting couples have children, they tend to manage their money more like married couples, adopting the Pahl systems that are associated with traditional gender roles.

Whatever the source of sex differences, Vogler and company seem to run into the same problem: The more they seek to suppress or deny gender realities, the more they show up, even in unexpected places.

(Source: Carolyn Vogler, “Cohabiting Couples: Rethinking Money in the Household at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,” The Sociological Review 53 [February 2005]: 1-29.)

The Unbalanced Budgets of Cohabitors   

Though progressive commentators generally view it as a fully acceptable substitute for marriage, nonmarital cohabitation offers little to children. For cohabiting parents typically part with so much of their money at tobacco and liquor stores that they have little left to spend on their children. Indeed, the dubious spending practices of cohabiting parents stir deep concerns among economists from the University of Chicago and Michigan State University who examine them in a study recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Scrutinizing data collected between 1982 and 1998 for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Chicago and Michigan State scholars discern a pattern that indicates that “cohabiting-parent families allocate their budgets differently than do married-parent families.” The differences appear “both in the level and in the share of expenditures allocated to different expenditure categories.” In particular, the researchers find in quarter-by-quarter assessments that “cohabiting-parent families spend a greater amount on two adult goods — alcohol ($124.78) and tobacco ($170.18) — than do married-parent [families] ($80.06 on alcohol, $107.53 on tobacco).” Expenditure differences are statistically significant (p <  0.01) for both types of adult goods.

On the other hand, cohabiting parents spend significantly less than married parents on their children’s education ($204.90 vs. $283.32; p < 0.01). They also spend significantly less than married parents on their children’s health care ($381.30 vs. $440.42; p < 0.01), though the researchers acknowledge that this difference may reflect the fact that “cohabiting parents are more likely to be covered by Medicaid than are married-parent families (36% vs. 15%).”

It troubles the authors of the new study both that “cohabitors do not invest as much in the children in their households” as do married peers and that “they spend their income in ways less beneficial to healthy child environments.”

The researchers speculate that many male cohabitators “invest less in the children’s well-being” because they are “not biologically related” to the children in the home. However, they emphasize that “even biological cohabitors ... may have a different set of expectations, values, and lifestyle preferences than do biological fathers in married households.” Thus, contrary to the theorizing of progressives that would define it as the functional equivalent of marriage, this new study provides strong “evidence that cohabitation is a distinct family type from marriage.”

(Source: Thomas DeLeire and Ariel Kalil, “How Do Cohabiting Couples With Children Spend Their Money?” Journal of Marriage and Family 67 (2005): 286-295.)

Smoking Singles   

Don’t let the camera angle fool you: that’s no horse the Marlboro man is riding; it’s a divorce lawyer. The advantage that tobacco companies find in family disintegration is all too apparent in a study recently published in Social Science & Medicine by a team of public health scholars at the University of Helsinki.

Parsing data collected in 2000 and 2001 from municipal employees in Helsinki, the Finnish researchers discern an unmistakable pattern: smoking is “clearly more common among lone parents than among married parents, even after adjusting for economic difficulties, socioeconomic status, and social relations.” Thus, while only 15% of married mothers in this study smoked, 26% of single mothers did. Among fathers, 32% of the married fathers in the study smoked, compared to 48% of single fathers (though the researchers acknowledged that the number of single fathers in the study was “quite low”).

Because their data indicate that men and women experiencing economic difficulties are especially likely to smoke (twice as likely as those not experiencing such difficulties) and because “economic difficulties are common in lone-parent households,” the researchers expected the statistical tie between parents’ marital status and their tobacco use to disappear after taking into account their financial distresses. The research, however, did not support this preconception.  “Contrary to our expectation,” the researchers acknowledge, “adjusting for economic difficulties did not level off the association between smoking and lone parenthood.” The data compel the researchers to conclude that for both mothers and fathers, “lone parenthood and economic difficulties are independently related to smoking.”

The authors of the new study worry that while “social relations are generally considered positive to health,” an unhealthy social pattern seems dominant within the social relations of single parents. “Particularly among lone parents,” the researchers remark, “smoking seems to be an important part of social life.” That is, the “social networks” of single parents actually appear “to encourage smoking.” The social networks of married parents, on the other hand, do not foster such unhealthy habits.

(Source: Ossi Rahkonen, Mikko Laaksonen, and Sakari Karvonen, “The contribution of lone parenthood and economic difficulties to smoking,” Social Science & Medicine 61 [2005]: 211-216.)

Trouble in the Preschool   

Progressive thinkers are always pressing to get children into non-maternal care at earlier and earlier ages. Five-year-olds, after all, need to prepare for first grade by going to kindergarten. Three- and four-year-olds need to get a leg up on the kindergarten curriculum by attending preschool. One- and two-year-olds need an early start on socializing by spending their days in day care.  And so it goes, in a regression that pulls children out of the home at ever-earlier ages.  That young children are actually round pegs in the square holes that educationists keep creating in this out-of-home bureaucracy seems almost unthinkable. But a study recently completed by researchers at the Yale Child Study Center makes the misfit between young children’s needs and preschool programs’ offerings all too clear.

Drawing data from randomly selected 4815 classrooms in the 52 state-funded pre-kindergarten programs in the 40 states that have such programs, the researchers uncovered a very disturbing pattern: pre-kindergarten students are expelled from their programs at rates more than three times as high as those for students attending kindergarten though twelfth-grade classes.

“No one wants to hear about three- and four-year-olds being expelled from preschool,” acknowledged Walter S. Gilliam, the lead Child Study Center researcher. “But it happens rather frequently.”

The pre-kindergarten expulsion rate ran one-and-a-half times higher among four-year-olds than among three-year-olds and more than four-and-a-half times higher among young boys than among young girls. But the overall pattern of high expulsion rates for pre-kindergarten students is indisputable: the overall margin of error for the data sampling was less than two percent.

Some readers of the new study may wonder if the young children getting expelled from their pre-school programs are not actually the smart ones: perhaps they have, after all, figured out what they must do to get back home with their mothers — where they belong in the first place.

(Source: Yale University Office of Public Affairs, “Pre-K Students Expelled at More Than Three Times the Rate of K-12 Students,” Yale Medical News 17 May 2005: 1-2 www.yale.edu/opu.)

Marriage and the Maternal Breast  

Because they recognize the health benefits breastfeeding confers, pediatricians around the world recommend that new mothers continue the practice for at least the first six months of their infants’ lives. However, a study recently published in Acta Pædiatrica by a team of Swedish epidemiologists suggests that even when governments offer extensive benefits to unwed mothers, it is married mothers who are most likely to heed their physicians’ recommendation.

Without question, the authors of the study recognize what is at stake in doctors’ efforts to promote breastfeeding.

Stressing “the importance of breastfeeding” for both infant and maternal health, the Swedish scholars enumerate many of its benefits. “Besides nutritional benefits,” they point out, “breastfeeding reduces the risk of infectious and atopic diseases, improves visual and psychomotor development, and possibly reduces the risk of adiposity in childhood.” What is more, the benefits breastfeeding delivers to mothers “range from reducing the risk of postpartum hemorrhage ... to reducing the risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and osteoporosis later in life.” But the researchers find that not all mothers are securing these benefits for themselves and their infant offspring.

Unmarried mothers, in particular, often forfeit the health advantages that come with breastfeeding.  Examining data collected for over 1078 infants born to women registered at a Russian antenatal clinic, the Swedish researchers are heartened to see “almost universal initiation of breastfeeding,” interpreting it as the consequence of the recommendations mothers receive from local healthcare officials and of the range of government benefits available to these Russian women, regardless of their social circumstances. The Swedish analysts regard as “positive features of the current Russian system” the provision of “almost universal coverage of pregnant women by free-of-charge prenatal care services, a stay of six or more days in maternity hospital even after uncomplicated delivery, and paid maternity leave for 18 mo[nths].” This package of government benefits, the researchers reason, may “create positive attitudes toward breastfeeding, as well as for establishing and maintaining good breastfeeding practices.”

But this panoply of government benefits cannot erase the fundamental distinction between married and unmarried mothers. The data in this new study reveal a significant “risk for shorter breastfeeding in single mothers,” compared to married mothers (p < 0.01). In other words, unmarried mothers in this study (including — the researchers acknowledge — unmarried cohabitors) were significantly more likely than their married peers to cut their breastfeeding short, so depriving themselves and their children important health benefits.

It would appear that chances for breastfeeding are best for the mother who has found not only a good pediatrician to consult, but also a good husband to wed.

(Source: Andrej M. Grjibovski et al., “Socio-demographic determinants of initiation and duration of breastfeeding in northwest Russia,” Acta Pædiatrica 94 [2005]: 588-594.)

Changed Laws, Changed Behavior  

While welfare reform has received plaudits for a dramatic reduction of caseloads, the reduction in unmarried teen pregnancy that the 1996 legislation targeted has received dramatically less attention. Yet a study by the late Paul Offner of the Urban Institute suggests that the law’s provisions mandating that unmarried teen mothers attend school and live with their parents as a condition of receiving cash assistance has yielded positive results in the behavior of low-income teens.

Offner analyzed a sample of 24,000 girls, ages 16 and 17, from the Current Population Survey March Supplement for the years 1989 to 2001, charting the high school dropout rate, the percentage living with parents, and the percentage having her own child. While the dropout rate remained pretty much the same among girls living 200 percent above the federal poverty level, the dropout rate among low-income girls (those living below the 200 percent threshold) declined from 13.4 percent in 1989 to 8.7 percent in 2001. Among low-income teen mothers the reduction was even greater, from 50.1 percent in 1989 to 22.7 percent in 2001.

Also among low-income teens, having a child out of wedlock was associated with a greater likelihood of living with a parent, although the correlation did not reach statistical significance. But among these same teens, the percentage having a child out of wedlock declined from 8.5 percent in 1989 to 5.8 percent in 2001.

Offner was further able to determine to what degree welfare reform, which was passed in 1996, was associated with these positive effects among low-income teens. Through regression analysis, he found that welfare reform correlated with a 3.2 percentage-point reduction (or a 24 percent reduction) in the high-school dropout rate and a 1.4 percentage-point reduction (or a 17 percent reduction) in unmarried girls with children.

While the reduction in the school dropout rate appears more dramatic, the researcher concedes that the pattern of decline had been established prior to 1996 and may have continued without welfare reform. However, the same cannot be said about out-of-wedlock births, as their reduction among low-income teens did not happen until after 1996.

Offner believes that his findings suggest, contrary to those who feared that welfare reform would lead to chaos, that “low-income young people respond to incentives, particularly when those incentives are buttressed by clear messages from society at large.”

(Source: Paul Offner, “Welfare Reform and Teenage Girls,” Social Science Quarterly 86 [June 2005]: 306-322.)