This study estimates how much children's family instability is missed when we do not count transitions into and out of cohabitation, and examines early life course trajectories of children to see whether children who experience maternal cohabitation face more family instability than children who do not. Using data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, analyses show that adding transitions into and out of cohabitation to those into and out of marriage increases our measure of family instability by about 30% for White children (N = 1575) and over 100% for Black children (N = 774). We conclude that future research on the impact of children's family composition while growing up should take into account transitions into and out of cohabitation.
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