Young people who graduate from high school, get a job, and get married before having children, in that order, are far less likely to be in poverty and far more likely to have a solid footing in the middle class later in life. This path to adulthood has been dubbed the "success sequence." The cultural norms and values embedded in the…

The United States shows striking racial and ethnic differences in marriage patterns. Compared to both white and Hispanic women, black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability. Kelly Raley, Megan Sweeney, and Danielle Wondra begin by reviewing common explanations for these differences,…

This study analyzed trends in marital behavior for unwed mothers who gave birth between 1960 and 2004. With nationally representative data on 15,353 White and Black unmarried mothers, results indicated that mothers who gave birth after 1989 were waiting much longer to marry than were mothers giving birth before 1968. The most pronounced delays…

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and provide insight into meanings and factors that contribute to healthy committed marriages among African American heterosexual married couples. This study explored the experiences of couples who had been married for 25 years and longer. This qualitative study was conducted using a…

With passage of the Welfare Reform Law of 1996, various national, state, and local programs were created to encourage marriage, particularly among low-income African American cohabiting couples with children. However, policy makers know little about the deterrents to marriage for members of this group. More specifically, there is a lack of data…

This study used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) on two generations of African American women who gave birth from 1967 to 2005 to describe changing relationships between marital status and low birth weight (LBW) across the generations. An increasing protection of marriage on infant LBW across the two generations was found after…

Objective: This study examined predictors of relationship stability over 5 years among heterosexual cohabiting and married African American couples raising an elementary-school-age child. The vulnerability-stress-adaptation model of relationships (Karney & Bradbury, 1995) guided the investigation. Contextual variables were conceptualized as…

This article assesses the relationship between low marriage rates and racial disparities in sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates. Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth was used to examine the prevalence of sexual risk behaviors by marital status. Logistic regression was used to examine whether racial differences in marriage…

Increasing fathers' involvement with their children has become a priority in recent years. Marriage promotion programs have been offered as the primary vehicles for increasing paternal involvement. Although marriage is likely to provide fathers with increased access and opportunity for paternal involvement, much less is known about the ways in…

This article explores the effects of being raised by married parents during childhood on health and well-being in adolescence and young adulthood in a longitudinal sample of African Americans. This study aims to address the following three questions: Does childhood with married parents lead to better health and well-being during adolescence? Does…

Never-married motherhood is associated with worse educational outcomes for children. But this association may reflect other factors that also determine family structure, rather than causal effects. We use incarceration rates for men as instrumental variables in estimating the effect of never-married motherhood on the high school dropout rate of…

We explore women's marital naming choices using the 2004 American Community Survey (ACS). Six percent of native-born married women have nonconventional surnames. "Nonconventional" surnames include hyphenated surnames, two surnames, and women who kept their own surname at marriage. Characteristics associated with nonconventional surname use include…

This paper investigates the effect of gender differences and household bargaining on charitable giving. I replicate the study of Andreoni, Brown, and Rischall (2003) using a different data set--the recently available Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplement on charitable giving--and test the sensitivity of their results to inclusion of…

Using Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), this article documents the extent to which cohabitors begin their union with intentions to marry (indicated by either being engaged or having definite plans to marry) and how this is related to subsequent cohabitation transitions, building on earlier literature examining expectations.…

Research on nonmarital fertility has focused almost exclusively on unmarried mothers, due in part to a lack of fertility information for men. Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth allows exploration of nonmarital fertility for both genders.The authors compare the characteristics of unmarried first-time mothers (n = 2,455) and fathers (n…