William G. Axinn

The relationship between cohabitation and divorce: selectivity or causal influence?

Recent evidence linking premarital cohabitation to high rates of divorce poses a complex theoretical and empirical puzzle. We develop hypotheses predicting that premarital cohabitation is selective of those who are prone to divorce as well as hypotheses predicting that the experience of premarital cohabitation produces attitudes and values which increase the probability of divorce. Using multiwave panel data from a recent cohort of young men and women in the United States, we specify and test models of these predictions. The results are consistent with hypotheses suggesting that cohabitation is selective of men and women who are less committed to marriage and more approving of divorce. The results also are consistent with the conclusion that cohabiting experiences significantly increase young people’s acceptance of divorce.

Reciprocal effects of religiosity cohabitation and marriage.

This article formulates and tests theoretical hypotheses of the reciprocal causal relationships between the formation of cohabiting and marital unions and religious commitment and participation. The article uses data from a panel study of mothers and children to show that the religiosity of both mothers and children influences the cohabiting and marital behavior of children, with those from less religious families having higher rates of entering intimate coresidential unions and a tendency to substitute cohabitation and marriage. Analyses of the reciprocal influences of cohabitation and marriage on religiosity indicate that cohabitation decreases religiosity, while marriage leads to increased religious participation.

The influence of school enrollment and accumulation on cohabitation and marriage in early adulthood

We explore the influence of education on cohabitation and marriage formulating a theoretical framework that identifies ways in which the multiple dimensions of education influence both cohabitation and marriage. Our theoretical framework links education and union formation through the incompatibility of educational and marital and cohabiting roles the opportunity costs of truncating education and the accumulation of skills knowledge and credentials gained from school attendance. Using this theoretical framework we formulate hypotheses about the influence of school enrollment and accumulation on marriage and cohabitation....We evaluate our hypotheses using event-history data from a panel study of young [U.S.] adults. Results indicate that school enrollment decreases the rate of union formation and has greater effects on marriage than on cohabitation. School accumulation increases marriage rates and decreases cohabitation--a pattern suggesting that less educated individuals tend to substitute cohabitation for marriage while those with greater school accumulation are more likely to marry. (EXCERPT)

Marriage and Cohabitation

In an era when half of marriages end in divorce, cohabitation has become more commonplace and those who do get married are doing so at an older age. So why do people marry when they do? And why do some couples choose to cohabit? A team of expert family sociologists examines these timely questions in Marriage and Cohabitation , the result of their research over the last decade on the issue of union formation. Situating their argument in the context of the Western world’s 500-year history of marriage, the authors reveal what factors encourage marriage and cohabitation in a contemporary society where the end of adolescence is no longer signaled by entry into the marital home. While some people still choose to marry young, others elect to cohabit with varying degrees of commitment or intentions of eventual marriage. The authors’ controversial findings suggest that family history, religious affiliation, values, projected education, lifetime earnings, and career aspirations all tip the scales in favor of either cohabitation or marriage. This book lends new insight into young adult relationship patterns and will be of interest to sociologists, historians, and demographers alike.

Unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships.

This paper investigates the relationships among unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships. We hypothesize that unwanted childbearing affects mother-child relationships in part because of the physical and mental health consequences of unwanted childbearing. Impaired mental health hampers womens interaction with their infants, and these poor neonatal relationships translate into poor mother-adult child relationships. Using the Intergenerational Panel Study of Mothers and Children--a 31-year longitudinal survey of a probability sample of 1,113 mother-child pairs begun in 1961--we demonstrate that mothers with unwanted births have lower quality relationships with their children from late adolescence (age 18) throughout early adulthood (ages 23 and 31). Furthermore, these lower quality relationships are not limited to the child born as a result of the unwanted pregnancy; all the children in the family suffer. Using the 1987-88 wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, a survey of a national probability sample of U.S. households, we show that mothers with unwanted births suffer from higher levels of depression and lower levels of happiness. We also demonstrate that they spank their young children more and spend less leisure time with them. We conclude that experiencing unwanted childbearing reduces the time and attention that mothers give their young children and that these early mother-child interactions set the stage for long-term, lower quality relationships.

Social change the social organization of families and fertility limitation.

The social organization of the family is a key link between macrolevel social change and individual‐level childbearing behavior. The family mode of organization framework and life course perspective are used to develop hypotheses about these links. To test those hypotheses, the analysis uses a combination of life history and neighborhood history measures designed explicitly for this purpose. Results from fully dynamic multilevel hazard models demonstrate both childhood and adult community contexts shape childbearing in independent ways. The results implicate a variety of specific mechanisms linking social change to fertility behavior: cost‐benefit analysis, ideational diffusion, and long‐term personality development. The results also show contextual characteristics at multiple points in the life course may each exert independent effects on individual outcomes.

The influence of parents’ marital dissolutions on children’s attitudes toward family formation

We investigate the influence of parents’ marital dissolutions on their children’s attitudes toward several dimensions of family formation. Hypotheses focus on the role of parents’ attitudes as a mechanism linking parents’ behavior to their children’s attitudes. We test these hypotheses using intergenerational panel data that include measures of parents’ attitudes taken directly from parents and measures of children’s attitudes taken directly from children. Results demonstrate strong effects of parental divorce, remarriage, and widowhood on children’s attitudes toward premarital sex, cohabitation, marriage. childbearing, and divorce. The results also show that parents’ own attitudes link their behavior to their children’s attitudes, although substantial effects of parental behavior remain after controlling for parents’ attitudes.

Mass education and fertility transition

The relationship between the spread of mass education and fertility-limiting behavior is examined. Existing theories relating education to fertility limitation are integrated, including those relating the presence of educational opportunity to fertility decline, theories relating womens education to their fertility behavior, and theories relating childrens education to the fertility behavior of their parents. Using survey data from a sample of 5,271 residents of 171 neighborhoods in rural Nepal, the individual-level mechanisms linking community-level changes in educational opportunity to fertility behavior are tested. A womans proximity to a school during childhood dramatically increases permanent contraceptive use in adulthood. This finding is largely independent of whether the woman subsequently attended school, whether her husband attended school, whether she lived near a school in adulthood, and whether she sent her children to school. Strong fertility limitation effects were also found for husbands education and for currently living near a school. These effects were independent of other education-related measures. The largest education-related effect is for sending children to school

Discrete-Time Multilevel Hazard Analysis

Combining innovations in hazard modeling with those in multilevel modeling, we develop a method to estimate discrete-time multilevel hazard models. We derive the likelihood of and formulate assumptions for a discrete-time multilevel hazard model with time-varying covariates at two levels. We pay special attention to assumptions justifying the estimation method. Next, we demonstrate file construction and estimation of the models using two common software packages, HLM and MLN. We also illustrate the use of both packages by estimating a model of the hazard of contraceptive use in rural Nepal using time-varying covariates at both individual and neighborhood levels.

Family influences on family size preferences

Several studies have demonstrated important effects of parents’ childbearing behavior on their children’s childbearing preferences and behavior. The study described here advances our understanding of these family influences by expanding the theoretical model to include parental preferences, siblings’ behavior, and changes in children’s preferences through early adulthood. Using intergenerational panel data from mothers and their children, we test the effects of both mothers’ preferences for their own fertility and mothers’ preferences for their children’s fertility. Although both types of maternal preferences influence children’s childbearing preferences, mothers’ preferences for their children’s behavior have the stronger and more proximate effects. Mothers’ preferences continue to influence their children’s preferences through early adulthood; siblings’ fertility is an additional determinant of children’s family size preferences.