ABSTRACT
The rate of cohabitation in the United States, like western Europe, has been another component of the noteworthy transformations in marriage and childbearing that have taken place over the last several decades (Smock & Gupta, chap. 4, this volume). Although the increase in cohabitation cuts across the U.S. population, there are significant variations across racial and ethnic groups that parallel the differences described by Kiernan (chap. 1, this volume) in her cross-national comparisons of western Europe. African Americans spend more of their adult lives loving and raising children in nonmarital cohabitating unions or in other nonmarital partnerships than do non-Blacks (Hunter, 1997; Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995a). Although the rate of cohabitation among African Americans is only modestly higher than the rate of cohabitation among Whites, Blacks are less likely to convert cohabitating unions to marriage (Bumpass & Sweet, 1989; London, 1991; Manning & Smock, 1995). African Americans are also more likely to have children in cohabitating unions but are less likely to marry to “legitimize” these births than are Whites (Loomis & Landale, 1994; Manning, 1993). These patterns have spawned a lively investigation of the sources of racial differences in cohabitation and its relationship to “traditional” patterns in marriage and childbearing.
