Adolescence is a key time to offer relationships/marriage education, as it is during adolescence that youth begin to actively explore romantic relationships. Providing effective relationships education can support positive youth development and help reduce impulsive and health-compromising behaviors. Relationships education also can facilitate movement toward well- functioning committed relationships and marriages in adulthood. This article […]

We investigate the effect of immigrants’ marriage behavior on dropout from education. To identify the causal effect, we exploit a recent Danish policy reform which generated exogenous variation in marriage behavior by a complete abolishment of spouse import for immigrants below 24 years of age. We find that the abrupt change of marriage behavior following […]

Contents: Chapter 1. — Questions about communication — Chapter 2. — Questions about conflict — Chapter 3. — Questions about careers — Chapter 4. — Questions about emotions — Chapter 5. — Questions about gender — Chapter 6 — Questions about in-laws — Chapter 7. — Questions about intimacy — Chapter 8. — Questions about […]

This article examines alternative approaches to encourage family formation among fragile families, including higher cash benefits, more liberal acceptance of welfare applications, more effective child support enforcement, and efforts to increase education and employment of low-income parents. We examine these approaches by refining and expanding previous work on a generalized logit model of the mothers’ […]

Contents– Section One : Why Marriage? — One man’s opinion — Preserving your treasure — Love really does conquer all — Making love last — Deconstructing domestic violence — Section Two : We Want Better For Our Children — Reaching our youth — Abstinence education for young men — Charity begins at home — Section […]

Nonmarital childbearing is important because it is increasing and because there is concern (and some evidence) that it is damaging to children and perhaps parents as well. We refer to the unions of unwed parents as fragile families because they are similar to traditional families in many respects, but more vulnerable. Most people believe that […]

Contents: Chapter 1. — Marriage as Sacrament in the Roman Catholic tradition — Chapter 2. — Marriage as Social Estate in the Lutheran Reformation — Chapter 3. — Marriage as Covenant in the Calvinist Tradition — Chapter 4. — Marriage as Commonwealth in the Anglican Tradition — Chapter 5. — Marriage as Contract in the […]

In this paper we use data from a new survey of unmarried parents – the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey – which interviews parents shortly after birth. The survey collects information from both mothers and fathers on a wide range of topics, including parents’ relationship, attitudes toward marriage and parenthood, parents’ human capital, and […]