New research in America has claimed that the rise in the number of cohabiting households with children is linked to increased instability in children's lives, and to a range of negative outcomes for children.
The report was co-sponsored by the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Its key findings include:
- Divorces involving children have largely returned to pre-"divorce revolution" levels. Specifically, about 23% of children whose parents married in the early 1960s divorced by the time the children turned ten. More recently, slightly more than 23% of children whose parents married in 1997 divorced by the time the kids turned ten, down from a high of more than 27% in the mid-1970s.
- Family instability for U.S. children overall continues to increase. The data shows that 66% of 16-year-olds were living with both parents in the early 1980s, compared to just 55% of 16-year-olds in the early 2000s.
- Cohabitation is playing a growing role in children's lives. Children are now more likely to be exposed to a cohabiting union than to a parental divorce.
- Children born to cohabiting unions are much more likely to experience a parental breakup compared to children born to married couples.
