Children of divorce getting divorced themselves; becoming teen moms, single moms, battered wives


Part of the Divorce Statistics Collection, from Americans for Divorce Reform
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Statistics on children of divorce, illegitimacy, and child abuse (Fagan & Hanks 1997) x
Kids twice as likely to be JDs, teen moms if father not in home
Teen Pregnancy Problem is really about the decline of marriage


See Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. DeBoer, "The Transmission of Marital
Instability across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to
Marriage?" Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (November 2001): 1038-1051

"......daughters of teenager mothers are more likely to become teenage mothers themselves, and are higher at risk of long-term welfare dependency."
Kamarck and Galston, "Progressive Family Policy," 162. Cited on page 35 ofThe Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher

"Children who grow up in single-parent homes are less likely to marry, more likely to divorce, and more likely to have children outside of wedlock."
Daniel T. Lichter et al., "Race and the Retreat from Marriage: A Shortage of Marriageable Men?" American Sociological Review 57 (December 1992): 781-799. Cited on page27 ofThe Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher

Stephanie Schamess conducted a study on the effects of unmarried mothers' child raising and found that daughters were more likely to become sexually active in their teen years and were more likely to become involved with men that will abuse them.
The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 167, citing Stephanie Schamess, "The Search for Love: Unmarried Adolescent Mothers' Views of, and Relationships with, Men," Adolescence 28, No. 110 (1993): 425ff.

In surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, researchers found that white female children of divorce were 60 percent more likely to undergo divorce or separation in adulthood than a similar population from intact families. The divorce/separation rate for white male children of divorce was 35 percent higher than for white male children from intact families.
Brian Willats, Breaking Up is Easy To Do, available from Michigan Family Forum. citing N.D. Glenn and K.B. Kramer, "The marriages and divorces of the children of divorce," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, pp. 811-825. Cited in Judith Wallerstein, Ph.D., "The Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Review," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, May 1991, p. 357.

Teens from single-parent homes are twice as likely to drop out of high school, become teen parents, and one-and-one-half times more likely to stay at home has young adults.
McLanahan and Sandefur, Growing Up. Cited on page34 ofThe Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher

"14% of white women who married in the 1940s eventually divorced. A single generation later, almost 50 percent of those that married in the late sixties and early seventies have already divorced" ... Between 1970 and 1992, the proportion of babies born outside of marriage leaped from 11% to 30%."
Amara Bachu, Fertility of American Women: June 1994 (Washington D.C.: Bureau of the Census, September 1995), xix, Table K. Cited on page5 ofThe Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher

The illegitimacy rate has increased 66% since 1980 and is still growing.
See Larry L. Bumpass, "What's Happening to the Family: Interaction Between Demographic and Institutional Change," Demography 27 (1990): 483-498. Cited on page11 ofThe Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher

"By 1994, 40% of never-married women in their thirties had had an illegitimate child."
Fertility of American Women: June 1994, v. Cited on page5 ofThe Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher

"It is a pattern of increasing numbers of households in the larger society. According to Washington-based National Center for Policy Alternatives, 40 percent of girls in school today will be the head of households."
Janice Mall in the Los Angeles Times, 12 April, 1987. Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation

"Almost 70% of the girls [teen-aged mothers] lived with their mothers......"
Los Angeles Times, 10 April, 1986 Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation, page 248.

"According to Sara McLanahan and Larry Bumpass, women were raised in female-headed families are 53 percent likelier to have teenage marriages, 111 percent likelier to have teenage births, 164 percent likelier to have premarital births, 93 percent likelier to experience marital disruptions.
"Intergenerational Consequences of Family Disruption, "American Journal of Sociology 4 (July, 1988), 130-52; cited in The Family in America: New Research, October, 1988. Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation, page 113

"Daughters from female-headed households are much more likely than daughters from two-parent families to themselves become single parents and to rely on welfare for support as adults.....[L]iving with a single mother at age 16 increases a daughter's risk of becoming a household head by 72 percent for whites and 100 percent for blacks. The contrast becomes even sharper if the comparison is between daughters continuously living in two-parent families with daughters living with an unmarried mother at any time between ages 12 and 16: 'Exposure to single motherhood at some point during adolescence increases the risk [of a daughter's later becoming a household head] by nearly 1 1/2 times for whites and.....by about 100 percent for blacks.' The public costs of this differential emerge in figures showing that a daughter loving in a single-parent household at any time during adolescence is far more likely (127 percent more likely among whites, 164 percent among blacks) to receive welfare benefits as an adult, compared to daughters from two-parent households."
Sara S. McLanahan, "Family Structure and Dependency: Reality Transitions to Female Household Head ship," Demography 25, Feb., 1988, 1-16. Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation, page 240

"Researchers have known for some time that girls raised in a female-headed household are much more likely to become unwed teen mothers that are girls much raised in two parent families. In a major new study, Professor William Marsigilio of Oberlin College has documented a parallel pattern for unmarried teenage fathers. In a survey of more than 5,500 young American men, Dr. Marsigilio found that 'males who had not lived with two parents at age 14 were over represented in the subsample of teenage fathers. Only 17 percent of all young men surveyed lived in one-parent households at age 14; yet, among the boys who had fathered an illegitimate child as a teenager, almost 30 percent came from single-parent households. In other words, teen boys from one-parent households are almost twice as likely to father a child out of wedlock as teen boys from two-parent families."
William Marsigilio, "Adolescent Fathers in the United States: Their Initial Living Arrangements, Marital Experience and Educational Outcomes," Family Planning Perspective, 19, November/December, 1987, 240-51. Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation, page 241

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