Diversity Among Unmarried Parents: Human Capital, Attitudes, And Relationship Quality

As policy makers seek to devise programs to promote healthy marriages among unmarried parents, significant differences between married and unmarried parents as well as differences among unmarried parents must be taken into account. A majority of unmarried parents express a desire to marry, but many obstacles exist to forming stable unions. This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing survey to answer the following questions: How different are unmarried parents from married parents in terms of their demographic characteristics, human capital, economic resources, attitudes about marriage and gender roles, and relationship quality? How do unmarried parents differ among themselves on these domains? How important are marriage expectations in differentiating unmarried parents? And to what extent do differences in demographic characteristics and socioeconomic status explain differences in attitudes and relationship quality? The results suggest that expectations of marriage are a key indicator of a couple?s marriage potential. Comparing married parents to unmarried parents, based on their living arrangement alone, provides incomplete information regarding the differences in human capital, attitudes, and relationship quality. Cohabitors and visitors are quite similar on most domains. However, mothers with high expectations of marriage have attitudes more favorable for marriage and better relationship quality than do mothers with low marriage intentions, even after controlling for their higher human capital. These results have important implications in targeting effective policies to help stabilize fragile families.