Children's Experience of Marital Disruption

Abstract

This paper uses life-table procedures and data from the 1973 Family Growth Survey to ask three basic question: (1) What is the cumulative probabilty that by a given age a child will have experienced a single-parent family as a consequence of marital dusruption? (2) Given a marital disruption, what is the cumulative proportion of children either experiencing parental remarriage or reaching age 18 within a given number of years following disruption? (3) What is the average duration of experience in a single-parent family? Estimates based on the early 1970s suggest that about one-third of all children will spend some time in a single-parent family before age 16 as a consequence of marital disruption (children born between marriages are included in these estimates, but those born before their mother's first marriage are not). There are very large differences by race, education, and the age of the mother at the child's birth. These differences appear in the timing as well as in the prevalence of marital disruption. Of those affected by disruption, one-quarter reach age 18 or their mothers remarry within two years of disruption. Of those affected by disruption, one-quarter reach age 18 or their mothers remarry within two years of disruption; within five years about half are still in a single-parent family. Subgroup differences in remarriage rates lessen differences in the experience of this status by education and age of mother but increase the differences by race.