Parental Divorce in Childhood and Demographic Outcomes in Young Adulthood

We investigated the long-term effects of parental divorce in childhood on demographic outcomes in young adulthood, using a British longitudinal national survey of children. Our analyses control for predisruption characteristics of the child and the family, including emotional problems, cognitive achievement, and socioeconomic status. The results show that by age 23, those whose parents divorced were more likely to leave home because of friction, to cohabit, and to have a child outside marriage than were those whose parents did not divorce. Young adults whose parents divorced, however, were no more or less likely to marry or to have a child in a marriage. Moreover, even in the divorced group, the great majority did not leave home because of friction or have a child outside marriage. Accumulating evidence across an array of developed,countries shows that children who experience parental divorce differ from those who do not with respect to leaving home, union formation, and childbearing behavior. Those from divorced families, and particularly from stepfamilies, are more likely than children reared by both biological parents to leave home at a young age and to do so for negative reasons, such as conflict and friction (see Goldscheider and Goldscheider 1989, 1993 on the United States; Kiernan 1992 on Great Britain; Mitchell, Wister, and Burch 1989 on Canada; Young 1987 on Australia). Young,persons who have experienced parental divorce are more likely than their peers to cohabit (Ghilagaber 1993 on Sweden; Kiernan 1992 on Great Britain; Liefbroer, Corijn, and Gierveld, 1993 on the Netherlands; Thornton 1991; Furstenberg and Teitler 1994 on the United States). The