COHABITATION, MARRIAGE, AND ENTRY INTO MOTHERHOOD

Prior research has neither explicitly compared the entry into motherhood of cohabiting with that of married women nor examined the impact of cohabitation on marital fertility in the United States. Subsamples of 2,056 women in first unions and 1,763 married women from the National Survey of Families and Households are used to address those questions. Entry into motherhood occurs more often and sooner in marriage than in cohabitation. Yet the transition from cohabitation to marriage does not appear to be influenced by desires to begin bearing children. Once nonpregnant cohabiters marry, the timing of the marital first birth is similar to that of women who never cohabited. Cohabitation accelerates the timing of marital first births only among White women who were pregnant when they married Instead, the impact of cohabitation on marital first birth timing operates partly via duration of time spent coresiding (in marriage and cohabitation).