Marriage among Unwed Mothers: Whites, Blacks and Hispanics Compared

Graefe, Deborah Roempke; Lichter, Daniel T.

doi:10.2307/3097747

Cited by 77 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Families in rural areas have less access to public transportation, health care, libraries, high-quality child care, and a host of other social services that can support families with young children (Evans, 2003; Vernon-Feagans, Gallagher, & Kainz, in press). There are large entrenched racial differences in rural areas, where African American children are much more likely to live in a female-headed household and be poor (Graefe & Lichter, 2002). However, there are some advantages of rural areas, including more family home ownership, more two-parent families, less random violent crime, smaller schools, and more social and extended family social support (Hofferth & Iceland, 1998;Lichter, 2003;Lichter, Roscigno, & Condron, 2003; Rural Families Data Center, 2004; Whitener, Weber, & Duncan, 2001).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative Social Risk, Parenting, and Infant Development in Rural Low-Income Communities

2008

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SynopsisObjective-The extent to which the severity of exposure to social risk is related to parenting and cognitive development in the first 15 months of an infant's life was studied in a representative diverse sample of families in two rural poor regions in the United States.Design-One thousand two hundred ninety-two families were followed for the first 15 months of the infant's life.Results-Evidence supported a pathway from risk severity through maternal sensitivity and warmth, language and learning activities, and maternal language to child outcomes, with the language and learning activities providing the most consistent independent prediction. Race, age, and geographic isolation moderated the associations between risk and different aspects of parenting. Both level and change in maternal engagement, maternal language input, and overall learning environment were related to early cognitive development. Cumulative risk measured as the mean of risk variables was a stronger predictor of parenting and infant development than when measured as the count of risk factors.Conclusion-Severity of risk exposure is negatively related to parenting and to child development for infants as young as 15 months of age. This study provides evidence supporting a pathway from risk severity through parenting to child outcomes and suggests that both initial parenting skills and change in parenting skills during infancy predict infants' cognitive skills. IntroductionFamily poverty and related social risk factors often have been linked to a variety of poor outcomes for young children (Hart & Risley, 1995;Campbell & Ramey, 1994; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN], 2005;Vernon-Feagans, 1996), especially if poverty and its attendant social risks are experienced during infancy (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 2000) or in families isolated in a rural setting (Brody & Flor, 1998). Most hypothesized process models include pathways from poverty and attendant risks through proximal parenting processes to child outcomes to explain why poverty impacts children's development (Sameroff & Fiese, 2000); however, this work has not identified specific aspects of parenting that serve as mediators. The current study was designed to address four issues relating exposure to social Copyright of Parenting: Science & Practice is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptParent Sci Pract. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 November 16. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript risk in infancy to different aspects of early parenting and to early cognitive development for infants and their families in rural low-income communities.Cumulative risk models, first proposed by Rutter (1979) and Garmezy, Masten, and Tellegen (1984), were developed to take into account the high...

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confidence: 99%

Cumulative Social Risk, Parenting, and Infant Development in Rural Low-Income Communities

2008

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“…By the turn of the 21 st century, about half of all non-marital births in the United States were to cohabiting mothers (Kennedy and Bumpass 2008;Manlove, Ryan, Wildsmith, and Franzetta 2010;Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan 2002), with similar patterns observed in Norway, and France, and among some cohorts from eastern Germany (Perelli-Harris et al 2012). The increase in births to cohabiting women occurred in tandem with the decline in postconception but pre-birth marriage (Graefe and Lichter 2002;Manning 2001;Musick 2007). Such developments have resulted in a burgeoning literature devoted to better understanding reasons for marital delay and non-marriage, particularly among unwed mothers and increasingly for cohabiting parents.…”

Section: Previous Research On Marital Expectations Men's Economic Atmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…In the United States, marriage rates among blacks are substantially lower than for whites, particularly following premarital conception (Graefe and Lichter 2002;Musick 2002). Hispanics are more likely than African-Americans to wed, but still demonstrate higher rates of non-marital births and are less likely to wed following a non-marital conception than are non-Hispanic Whites (Musick 2002).…”

Section: Other Factors Shaping Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is surprising, for two reasons. First, a wealth of research shows that unwed parents differ in important ways from those who marry before bearing children, and that cohabitors differ from those who marry directly (Acs and Nelson 2004;Clarkberg 1999;Graefe and Lichter 2002). Non-marital parenting and cohabitation in the United States are most prevalent among racial minorities and those with low levels of education, poor earnings, and unstable employment or marital histories (Blackwell and Lichter 2004;Manning 2001;Martin 2004;Musick 2002) -all factors that reduce marriages.…”

Section: Previous Research On Marital Expectations Men's Economic Atmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Men’s economic status and marital transitions of fragile families

Sassler

Roy

Stasny

2014

DemRes

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“…Between 60 % and 80 % of women with a nonmarital birth have married by the age of 40 (Graefe and Lichter 2002). White mothers, compared with mothers of color, are more likely to marry (Gibson-Davis 2011;Smock and Greenland 2010); maternal age and educational attainment also positively predict post-birth marriage (Lichter and Graefe 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Magic Moment? Maternal Marriage for Children Born Out of Wedlock

Gibson‐Davis

2014

Demography

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To test the existence of the "magic moment" for parental marriage immediately post-birth and to inform policies that preferentially encourage biological over stepparent marriage, this study estimates the incidence and stability of maternal marriage for children born out of wedlock. Data came from the National Survey of Family Growth on 5,255 children born nonmaritally. By age 15, 29 % of children born nonmaritally experienced a biological-father marriage, and 36 % experienced a stepfather marriage. Stepfather marriages occurred much later in a child's life-one-half occurred after the child turned age 7-and had one-third higher odds of dissolution. Children born to black mothers had qualitatively different maternal marriage experiences than children born to white or Hispanic mothers, with less biological-parent marriage and higher incidences of divorce. Findings support the existence of the magic moment and demonstrate that biological marriages were more enduring than stepfather marriages. Yet relatively few children born out of wedlock experienced stable, biological-parent marriages as envisioned by marriage promotion programs.

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Marriage among Unwed Mothers: Whites, Blacks and Hispanics Compared

Abstract: Marriage promotion policies should focus on lowering rates of nonmarital childbearing. Reductions in nonmarital childbearing, however, may not eliminate long-standing discrepancies in marriage rates between black and white women.

Cited by 77 publications

References 15 publications

Cumulative Social Risk, Parenting, and Infant Development in Rural Low-Income Communities

Cumulative Social Risk, Parenting, and Infant Development in Rural Low-Income Communities

Men’s economic status and marital transitions of fragile families

Magic Moment? Maternal Marriage for Children Born Out of Wedlock

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