Unintended Childbearing and Marital Instability: An Emphasis on Couples' Intentions.

The birth of a child can negatively impact relationship functioning, especially if one or both partners did not intend to have a child. As such, unintended or disagreed-upon births may elevate the risk of dissolution. In this paper, we use the National Survey of Family Growth to consider how married couples characterize the intendedness of their first birth and examine its linkage with dissolution.

Methodological Considerations in Couples' Fertility Intentions: Missing Men and the Viability of Women's Proxy Reports.

Introduction Recent efforts show potential to advance research on unintended childbearing by taking a couple-level approach. However, this work has neither adequately addressed methodological concerns stemming from the challenges associated with male fertility data nor considered the viability of women's proxy reports of fathers intentions. Methods Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) were used to assess the implications of low response rates among men on couples' unintended childbearing.

Trends in Children's Family Instability, 1995-2010.

Using data from the 1995 and 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, the authors study examined children's family instability from birth to age 12, emphasizing variation by racial and ethnic group. Period and cohort estimates revealed little change in children's experiences of family transitions during the past decade. Family instability levels were comparable for White and Hispanic children, and this pattern persisted over time.

Same-Sex and Different-Sex Cohabiting Couple Relationship Stability.

Relationship stability is a key indicator of well-being, but most U.S.-based research has been limited to different-sex couples.

Family Structure and Child Well-Being: Integrating Family Complexity.

Although children's family lives are diverse, the measurement of children's living arrangements has lagged, focusing on the relationships of children to parents while largely ignoring sibling composition. Using data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation ( = 23,985) the authors documented patterns of family complexity among a nationally representative sample of children ages 0-17 living in a range of family structures. They also examined the independent and joint associations of family structure and family complexity on child economic well-being.