ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on children in cohabiting-couple households for two reasons. First, cohabitation represents a two-adult living arrangement that has become a prominent part of children's lives. Second, one of the goals of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Cohabitation can represent a type of two-parent family, but it was probably not the two-parent family form that was envisioned by the original architects of welfare reform. Most of the research that examines how child well-being in cohabiting-parent households contrasts to married-parent families suggests some differences in academic achievement, behavior problems, and developmental outcomes. Empirical evidence indicates that an unmarried mother's household living arrangements, not just her marital status, have implications for her children's social and economic well-being. Using the parents' marital status as a basis for making conclusions about children's lives may not be as informative or reliable as considering household living arrangements and relationships.
