Nonmarital Childbearing, Union History, and Women’s Health at Midlife

Abstract

Despite high rates of nonmarital childbearing in the U.S., little is known about the health of women who have nonmarital births. We use data from the NLSY79 to examine differences in age 40 self-assessed health between women who had a premarital birth and those whose first birth occurred within marriage. We then differentiate women with a premarital first birth according to their subsequent union histories and estimate the effect of marrying or cohabiting versus remaining never-married on midlife self-assessed health, paying particular attention to the paternity status of the mother's partner and the stability of marital unions. To partially address selection bias, we employ multivariate propensity score techniques. Results suggest that premarital childbearing is negatively associated with midlife health for white and black (but not Hispanic) women. We find no evidence that these negative health consequences of nonmarital childbearing are mitigated by either marriage or cohabitation for black women. For other women, only enduring marriage to the biological father is associated with better health than remaining unpartnered.

Family Diversity and Child Health: Where Do Same‐Sex Couple Families Fit?

“…As a result, family structure patterns tend to vary along socioeconomic and racial or ethnic lines, such that unmarried families with children are disproportionately Black and economically disadvantaged relative to their married parent counterparts (Vespa et al, 2013) and are more likely to undergo a family transition (Demo & Fine, 2010;Harknett, 2009). These divergent childbearing and marital trajectories have implications not only for adults' health, economic, and relationship futures (Williams, Sassler, Frech, Addo, & Cooksey, 2011) but also for their children (Williams, Sassler, Frech, Addo, & Cooksey, 2013). On average, the resources married couples are able to invest in their children's healthy growth and development outmatch those of unmarried couples, thus partly driving family structure differences in children's outcomes (McLanahan, 2004).…”

Family formation patterns and physical health in Australia: a life course approach

“…So, for example, the lack of significant differences between women in the various 'standard' family life course groups does not indicate that parity or timing of family formation are unrelated to health -but rather that they are unrelated to health conditional on subsequently remaining in a single marriage. This is an observation which parallels Williams et al (2011) finding that the negative health consequences of a non-marital first birth were mitigated by subsequent marriage to the child's father. It also agrees with Umberson, Pudrovska and Reczek's (2010) summary of a number of studies which suggest that short-term health and health-related consequences of parenthood are less pronounced for married women.…”

“…Both Henretta (2007) and Williams et al (2011) examined how marital status at first birth affects women's subsequent health. These studies found that a nonmarital first birth reduced women's health much later, across multiple dimensions of health including self-rated health, mortality, and chronic disease.…”

“…Marriage and parenthood have been shown to be associated with diverse health outcomes With some notable exceptions (Henretta 2007;Kravdal et al 2012;Sabbath et al 2015;Williams et al 2011), most research has focused on marital or fertility histories as independent predictors of health. However, there are compelling reasons to suggest that marital and fertility trajectories will be interdependently related to health.…”

“…For instance, multi-partner fertility, an interaction of parity and marital history, and the timing of fertility and marital events vis-à-vis one another were all related to mortality. Last, both Henretta (2007) and Williams et al (2011) found that a non-marital birth was negatively associated with women's health later in life, with Williams and colleagues also reporting that this effect depended on the woman's subsequent marital relationship with the father. Both theory and empirical evidence therefore suggest the importance of research which addresses the question of how marital and fertility trajectories jointly influence health.…”