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Title: Better for Baby? The Retreat From Mid-Pregnancy Marriage and Implications for Parenting and Child Well-being
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Su, Jessica Houston
Dunifon, Rachel
Sassler, Sharon
Better for Baby? The Retreat From Mid-Pregnancy Marriage and Implications for Parenting and Child Well-being
Demography, 52, 4 (August 2015): 1167-1194.
Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-015-0410-5
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Childbearing, Premarital/Nonmarital; Children, Well-Being; Gender Attitudes/Roles; Home Environment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Marriage; Maternal Employment; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Pregnancy and Pregnancy Outcomes; Propensity Scores

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Recent decades have seen a significant decline in mid-pregnancy ("shotgun") marriage, particularly among disadvantaged groups, which has contributed to increasing nonmarital birth rates. Despite public and political concern about this shift, the implications for parenting and child well-being are not known. Drawing on a sample of U.S. black and white mothers with nonmarital conceptions from the NLSY79, our study fills this gap. Using propensity score techniques to address concerns about selection bias, we found that mid-pregnancy marriages were associated with slightly better parenting quality relative to remaining single, although effect sizes were small and limited to marriages that remained intact at the time of child assessment. Mid-pregnancy marriages were not associated with improved children's behavior or cognitive ability. These findings suggest that the retreat from mid-pregnancy marriage may contribute to increasing inequality in parenting resources for children.
Bibliography Citation
Su, Jessica Houston, Rachel Dunifon and Sharon Sassler. "Better for Baby? The Retreat From Mid-Pregnancy Marriage and Implications for Parenting and Child Well-being ." Demography, 52, 4 (August 2015): 1167-1194.