ABSTRACT
Research examining the well-being of children often relies on the parents’ marital status as a way to understand the context in which children are raised. Marital status provides information about the potential number of caretakers and may imply certain characteristics or qualities of the child’s family life. The importance of parents’ marital status is reflected in the extensive research attention to the implications of the end of marriage on children’s well-being. This emphasis on marital status was appropriate when relatively few children ever lived in cohabiting unions. However, the shift in children’s experience in cohabitation requires that cohabitation be considered in new research on child well-being (Bumpass & Lu, 2000). Currently, there are relatively few published papers on this topic but it is an emerging research arena evidenced in part by a growing number of national conference presentations on the topic.
