Unmarried, cohabiting parents may be putting their kids at risk for a host of personal problems– at least according to a fresh report from the University of Virgina’s National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values. However are the findings in the report really as straightforward as they seem?The report, released August 16 and entitled “Why Marriage Matters,” pulls together findings from 18 scholars to argue that kids living in cohabiting households don’t do as well socially, educationally and psychologically as kids living in intact married households. The authors mark to a lack of stability in cohabiting relationships as one of the culprits: cohabiting couples with a minor are more than twice as likely to break up before their minor turns 12 as their married counterparts. That lack of stability–defined as the rotating crop of parent-like figures who transition in and outside of kids’ lives–is tied to college failure, behavior problems, drug employ and loneliness. The effects are exceptionally evident in children who familiarity distinct of these transitions.The findings are cause for concern, according to the authors, since cohabiting families are on the rise: there are twelve times as many today as there were in the 1970s. Recent statistics exhibit that 42 percent of kids have lived in a cohabiting household by the age of twelve (by contrast, only 24 percent of kids have experienced divorce by that age). Marriage, the authors affirm, is the gold average for stability and is therefore the relationship that will ensure kids have the best shot at succeeding in lifetime. Glance at More…
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