Relationship Churning and Parenting Stress Among Mothers and Fathers

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12297
• Author: Kristin Turney,Sarah Halpern‐Meekin
• Published date: 01 June 2016
• Date: 01 June 2016

S H-M University of Wisconsin, Madison

K T University of California, Irvine∗

Relationship Churning and Parenting Stress Among

Mothers and Fathers

Researchers have documented the consequences

of relationship instability for parenting stress

but have given little attention to within-partner

relationship instability. In this study, the authors

used data from the Fragile Families and Child

Wellbeing Study (N=3,544) to estimate the

association between within-partner rela-

tionship instability (known as churning or

on-again/off-again relationships) and parenting

stress. First, they found that by the focal child’s

5th birthday about 16% of biological parents

experience churning. Second, comparedto being

stably together with or stably separated from

the child’s other parent, churning is associated

with greater parenting stress for both mothers

and fathers. Because parenting stress is the

same or higher among churners compared to

their counterparts who stably separate, this

suggests that, more than a change in partner,

relationship instability—whether within or

across relationships—is tied to parenting stress.

In a world of uid family structures, the

resources parents have at their disposal to sup-

port them in parenting tasks vary as romantic

Department of Human Development and Family Studies,

University of Wisconsin, 1300 Linden Dr.,Madison, WI

53706 (sarah.halpernmeekin@wisc.edu).

∗Department of Sociology, Universityof California, Irvine,

3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697-5100.

Key Words: Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study,

parenting stress, relationshipinstability.

partners enter and exit family life. The result

may be heightened parenting stress—the psy-

chological strain created when one perceives

that the demands of the parenting role exceed

one’s capacity to fulll them. Relationship

transitions among both married and unmar-

ried parents are associated with increased

parenting stress (Beck, Cooper, McLanahan,

& Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Cooper, McLanahan,

Meadows, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009; Meadows,

McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008; Osborne,

Berger, & Magnuson, 2012; Ryan, Tolani,

& Brooks-Gunn, 2009). Relationship transi-

tions—ending a cohabiting union with a child’s

biological parent or moving in with a new

partner, for example—may cause tensions in

the family system and affect residential parents’

economic or emotional resources, increasing

their parenting stress (Beck et al., 2010; Cooper

et al., 2009; Osborne et al., 2012).

Previous research has treated relation-

ship transitions as one-way, one-time events:

A couple is either together or not together.

This neglects the small but growing set of

studies that have found that relationship churn-

ing—breaking up and getting back together—is

relatively common among unmarried couples

(Dailey, Pester, Jin, Beck, & Clark, 2009;

Halpern-Meekin, Manning, Giordano, & Long-

more, 2012; Vennum, Lindstrom, Monk, &

Adams, 2014). In other words, unmarried

couples experience both stable and unstable

breakups, with some couples remaining sepa-

rated and others reuniting. Grouping all couples

who are in relationships and all who have

Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (June 2016): 715–729 715

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12297