A closer look at unmarried parenthood: Relationships, meanings, trajectories and gender

Unmarried childbearing accounts for one third of births in the United States and is associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. Despite much new research, we lack a descriptive portrait that ties details about unmarried parents' lives with the processes that shape their relationship trajectories over time. My dissertation probes the connections between couples' systems of meaning, their daily practices and larger power structures. The study is based on qualitative interview data from 48 unmarried couples with children who were part of the Time, Love and Cash Among Couples with Children Study, a subsample of the Fragile Families Study. I draw on four years of interview data and use standard qualitative techniques based on grounded theory and comparative case studies to study unmarried parenthood.;Few unmarried pregnancies are planned, although many reflect ambivalent intentions. The most common response to unexpected pregnancy is cohabitation, which has replaced the shotgun marriage and allows the locus of commitment in family relationships to shift from the couple relationship to the child. Once couples are cohabiting, they must figure out how to organize their relationship, parenting, and economic support. To do this, they draw on cultural scripts of parenthood, cohabitation and marriage, which offer competing and conflicting guides for action and defining situations and expectations. Couples see cohabitation as a flexible relationship without formal commitments that is easily ended. Marriage is viewed as a fulfilling romantic relationship organized around a lifetime commitment between partners with defined roles and expectations. Parenting is meaningful for both mothers and fathers, who view fathers as nurturing caregivers and prioritize their breadwinning role.;I observe much instability and many relationship problems among couples. By the study's end, one third of the couples have broken up, close to 20% have married and the remainder are cohabiting in relationships of widely varying quality. Most break-ups are due to infidelity and mistrust, and relationship quality is mostly stable over time. How couples fare over time largely depends on the locus of commitment for cohabitation and how it combines with economic circumstances and relationship quality. I discuss the implications of my findings for current family policy.