Cyclical Cohabitation Among Unmarried Parents in Fragile Families

Building on past research suggesting that cohabitation is an ambiguous family form, the authors examined an understudied residential pattern among unmarried parents: cyclical cohabitation, in which parents have multiple cohabitation spells with each other. Using 9 years of panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,084), they found that 10% of all parents with nonmarital births, and nearly a quarter of those living together when the child is 9 years old, are cyclical cohabitors. Cyclically cohabiting mothers reported more material hardships than mothers in most other relationship patterns but also reported more father involvement with children. On all measures of child well-being, except grade retention, children of cyclically cohabiting parents fared no worse than children of stably cohabiting biological parents and did not differ significantly from any other group.