Vetting and Letting: Cohabiting Stepfamily Formation Processes in Low‐Income Black Families
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12217 |
M R A G National Development and Research Institutes
Vetting and Letting: Cohabiting Stepfamily
Formation Processes in Low-Income Black Families
The authors examined cohabiting union forma-
tion processes by analyzing in-depth interview
data collected from 30 individuals in cohabiting
relationships: 15 low-income Black mothers of
adolescents and their partners. Prior research
suggests that cohabiting union formation is a
gradual, nondeliberative process. In contrast,
most couples in this study described a gradual
but highly deliberative process.Mothers focused
primarily on vetting their partners to ensure
child well-being and less on when and how
their partners ofcially came to live with them,
a process the authors call vetting and letting.
Mothers delineated 4 strategies to ensure their
child’s well-being when vetting their partners,
and their partners reported that they understood
the importance of participating in this process.
The authors argue that vetting and letting is a
child-centered family formation process, not a
partner-centered union formation process, and
that cohabiting union processes may vary sub-
stantially by subpopulation.
Family structure is growing increasingly varied,
complex, and stratied in the United States
(Cherlin, 2010; McLanahan, 2004; Stykes &
Williams, 2013). In recent years, single-parent
households have increased, and cohabitation has
National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., 71
West 23rd St., 4th Floor,New York, NY 10010
Megan Reid is now at Institute for Research on Poverty,
University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1180 Observatory
Drive, Madison, WI 53706 (reid@ndri.org).
This article was edited by Kevin M. Roy.
Key Words: African Americans, cohabiting couples with
children,low-income families, mothers, qualitative research,
stepfamilies.
emerged as a common family form (Chambers &
Kravitz, 2011; Dunlap, Golub, & Benoit, 2010;
Raley, 1996; Rinelli & Brown, 2010). Cohabita-
tion is especially common among Black families
(Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Chambers & Kravitz,
2011; Golub, Reid, Strickler, & Dunlap, 2013;
Ruggles, 1997). This means that children, espe-
cially Black children, are increasingly likely
to spend at least part of their childhood in a
cohabiting family (Kennedy & Bumpass, 2008).
Accordingly, family researchers have begun to
examine cohabiting families as an increasingly
important population for understanding broader
family dynamics (Brown, 2003) as well as
both adult (Williams, Sassler, & Nicholson,
2008) and adolescent (Brown, 2004; Williams,
Sassler, Frech, Addo, & Cooksey, 2013) health
and socioeconomic disparities.
Research suggests that cohabitation is not a
singular phenomenon but an arrangement that
varies on the basis of the life circumstances
of the partners in the union. Impoverished and
Black individuals are less likely to transition
from cohabitation to marriage than nonpoor and
White individuals (Brown, 2000; Guzzo, 2009;
Lichter & Qian, 2008; Manning & Smock, 1995;
Raley, 1996). Lichter, Qian, and Mellot (2006)
suggested that cohabitation among poor women
is more likely to be an alternative to or substi-
tute for traditional marriage than among nonpoor
women. Despite the seeming variation in cohab-
itation across subpopulations and cultural and
policy attention focused on the partnering behav-
iors of low-income Black mothers specically,
few researchers have examined the processes of
cohabiting union formation in this population.
In this study, we examined cohabiting union
formation processes among Black low-income
1234 Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (October 2015): 1234–1249
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12217
Cohabitation Processes Among Low-Income Couples 1235
single mothers of adolescents and their partners
by analyzing in-depth interview data collected
from both partners in 15 currently cohabit-
ing couples. Prior research, which we review
below, suggests that cohabiting union formation
involves gradually sliding into a relationship
as opposed to deliberately deciding to cohabit,
conceptualized in the literature as the sliding
model. Most couples in our study described
their transition into their cohabitating relation-
ship as a gradual but also very deliberative
process. Mothers reported vetting their partner
for whether he would be a good parent and
be compatible with her children before letting
him move in. Their partners largely reported
that they understood and sought to pass this
deliberative vetting process. Therefore, we refer
to the family formation process we observed as
vetting and letting. Mothers described a greater
focus on this vetting process than on when they
came to ofcially coreside with the partner. We
identify four strategies mothers described using
in the vetting process and argue that vetting
and letting is a child-centered family formation
process as opposed to a partner-centered union
formation process.
B
In this section, we review current literature on
family formation patterns and cohabitation to
provide a background for our analysis.
Contemporary Family Formation Trends
Romantic union and family formation processes
in the United States are becoming more varied
and complex, as evidenced by the decoupling of
marriage and childbearing and declining mar-
riage rates in general (Cherlin, 2004; Sassler,
2004; Seltzer et al., 2005). As marriage rates
decline, cohabitation is becoming more com-
mon. Cohabitation rates are now at an all-time
high, with 54% of all women spending time in
a cohabiting relationship by age 44 (Kennedy
& Bumpass, 2008). The rate of serial cohab-
itation—an individual having two or more
premarital cohabitations—increased nearly
40%, from 8.7% in 1995 to 12.1% in 2002
(Lichter, Turner, & Sassler, 2010). Correspond-
ingly, children are increasingly being raised for
at least part of their lives in cohabiting families.
Of children born between 1997 and 2000, 34%
were born to unmarried mothers, half of whom
were in cohabiting relationships (Kennedy
& Bumpass, 2008). As of 2000, 43% of all
cohabiting-couple households included minor
coresidential children (Lichter & Qian, 2008).
Children being raised in cohabiting families is
much more common in the Black population
than in the non-Hispanic White and Hispanic
populations: Sixty-eight percent of births to
Black mothers (1997–2001) were to unmar-
ried women, with 40% of these to cohabiting
mothers (Kennedy & Bumpass, 2008).
Researchers estimate that almost half of U.S.
children will spend time in a cohabiting (biologi-
cal or step-) parent family (Bumpass & Lu, 2000;
Kennedy & Bumpass, 2008). In the present study
we focused on cohabiting stepfamilies, meaning
unmarried cohabiting partners raising children
from prior relationship(s) together, because
this family form is increasingly common yet
largely unexamined. This family structure is
especially common for Black children; Kennedy
and Bumpass (2008) estimated that almost half
of Black children born to (noncohabiting) single
or married mothers will experience maternal
cohabitation by age 12. This growth in cohab-
itation and cohabiting stepfamilies, and their
concentration in Black families, is signicant for
child well-being. A few studies have suggested
that child outcomes such as school achievement
and behavior problems are similar in mar-
ried and cohabiting stepfamilies (Brown, 2002,
2004; Morrison & Ritualo, 2000), but most stud-
ies have found that developmental outcomes
in cohabiting stepfamilies are more similar to
those in single-mother families and worse than
those in married-parent families (Berger, Carl-
son, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008; Brown, 2004;
Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch, 1996; Man-
ning & Lamb, 2004; McLanahan & Percheski,
2008; Morrison & Ritualo, 2000; Sweeney,
2007; White & Gilbreth, 2001).
Cohabiting Union Formation Processes
Although cohabitation is becoming more com-
mon and research suggests it is associated
with disadvantages for children, surprisingly
little work has examined the cohabiting union
formation process itself (Sassler, 2004; Sassler
& Miller, 2011) and its variation across sub-
populations. In their seminal study of lower
middle-class and working-class adults between
ages 21 and 35 with current or recent cohabiting
relationship experience, Manning and Smock
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