What Does Cohabitation Data Tell Us About Fathers and the Success Sequence?

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

In more than two decades of working with fathers, I’ve rarely met a man at the clean beginning of a sequence, with all his milestones ahead of him. 

Most fathers don’t walk through our doors at 16 years old with education, employment, marriage, and parenthood lined up neatly in front of them. Typically, they arrive after something has already happened. The baby has been born. The relationship has changed. The couple has moved in together or moved apart. Someone has lost a job. An argument has become a breakup. A child support order has arrived. A new relationship has begun. 

A father who expected to wake up in the same home as his child may suddenly find himself figuring out parenting time from a separate address.

That reality has been on my mind as I’ve followed recent conversations on Dads Pad Blog about the Success Sequence, the familiar framework encouraging young people to complete their education, secure full-time employment, marry, and then have children. You can catch up with the 2-part series here:

• Where Does the Success Sequence Leave Everyone Else?
• The Success Pathway: A Model for Moving Forward From Wherever You Are

Data Supporting the Success Sequence

The evidence behind the Success Sequence framework deserves serious consideration. Research using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, or NLSY97, has found striking associations between that sequence and economic security. The Institute for Family Studies reports that 97% of young adults who completed the sequence weren’t poor by their mid-30s and that 86% reached the middle or upper economic classes.

Those numbers shouldn’t be dismissed even if the Success Sequence makes us uncomfortable. Marriage, education, employment, relationship stability, and thoughtful decisions about when to have children can matter a great deal. Encouraging young people to make decisions that increase the likelihood of stability for themselves and their future children has value.

What Cohabitation Data Reveals About Family Structure

Then Pew Research Center released an August analysis of another part of the very same NLSY97 story. Pew found that 

• 77% of Americans ages 38 to 43 had lived with an unmarried romantic partner at some point.
• More than a third (37%) had lived with at least two different cohabiting partners. 
• Among people who had cohabited, two-thirds eventually married someone they had lived with.
• 28% had never married by their early 40s. 
• A quarter had experienced at least one cohabiting relationship lasting five years or longer.

When we read these findings beside the Success Sequence, something becomes clear: America isn’t simply marrying or not marrying. Americans are cohabiting, transitioning, marrying later, separating, forming new relationships, raising children inside different arrangements, and sometimes moving from one family structure into another. 

Marriage isn’t always the “go-to” family structure anymore.

This doesn’t mean marriage no longer matters. “Common” and “equivalent” aren’t the same claim. We should recognize evidence showing advantages associated with stable marriage without pretending other family arrangements produce identical outcomes. 

Where Are Fathers in the Data?

At the same time, we should be willing to look directly at the lives Americans are actually living, and as someone who has spent much of his professional life thinking about fathers, that’s where the new Pew research becomes particularly interesting to me.

Pew’s analysis isn’t a fatherhood study, and it doesn’t claim to be one. It examines cohabitation, relationship histories, education, race, ethnicity, age, and transitions into marriage. There’s nothing inappropriate about that research question. Yet the absence of fathers from the analysis is worth exploring.

Search the Pew article for “father,” and you won’t find him. Search for “children,” and you won’t find them either. The article tells us an extraordinary amount about who people lived with, when they lived together, how long they lived together, and whether they eventually married. However, it doesn’t tell us which of these men became fathers, whether their children lived with them, whether they were caring for those children, what happened to their parenting when the romantic relationship dissolved, or whether fathers remained engaged after moving to another household.

Understanding the deeper story within the cohabitation data is critical because the public argument about marriage often points its finger at fatherhood. 

One of the concerns surrounding nonmarital births and family instability has long been the worry that fathers will become disconnected from their children. Responsible fatherhood itself became part of American family policy partially because policymakers cited negative outcomes when fathers didn’t provide safe, nurturing, and consistent involvement in their children’s lives.

If father absence is part of the diagnosis, then fathers should be part of the measurement. We can’t keep measuring marital status with precision while measuring the father with assumption.

The irony is that the underlying NLSY97 data can take researchers much further. The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the survey as containing information on dating, marriage and cohabitation, sexual activity, pregnancy and fertility, and children. Its documentation includes information about children’s other parents and, in earlier rounds, questions specifically asking fathers about prenatal involvement and activities with their children, such as feeding, bathing, dressing, preparing meals, and reading.

The data infrastructure exists to ask better questions:

• Which men in these cohabiting relationships became fathers? 
• Did becoming parents increase or decrease the likelihood of marriage? 
• How many fathers remained in the household with their children? 
• What happened to father-child contact when cohabiting relationships ended? 
• Were fathers who never married less engaged with their children, or were some deeply involved from another residence? 
• How did employment, education, incarceration, housing, relationship quality, legal parentage, multiple-partner fertility, and co-parenting affect those trajectories?

These are central questions if we’re going to connect marriage, family structure, and responsible fatherhood.

I’ve long said there’s no such thing as a fatherless child: 100% of biological children have fathers. The question isn’t whether he exists. The question is where he exists.

A father can be unmarried and living with the mother of his children. He can be unmarried and living somewhere else. He can be married and emotionally disengaged. He can be divorced and consistently involved. He can live three miles away and parent every day. He can live in the child’s household and barely parent at all.

Residence tells us something. Marriage tells us something. But neither tells us everything. Marriage is a family structure; presence is a behavior; engagement is a relationship.

Our own fatherhood research has repeatedly encountered this distinction. Fathers interviewed for Fathers Incorporated’s Dynamics of Black Dads study described how the quality of a father’s relationship with their child’s mother can either facilitate or interfere with their involvement. The broader research reviewed in that study similarly identifies supportive co-parenting as an important contributor to paternal engagement, particularly for fathers who don’t reside with their children.

That doesn’t make marriage irrelevant. It makes relationship quality and parenting behavior visible alongside it.

Cohabitation Differences by Race and Education 

The racial findings in the Pew report raise another set of questions we should resist answering too quickly. Black adults in this cohort were actually less likely than white adults to have ever cohabited: 71% compared with 79%. The larger difference appeared in what happened afterward. Among adults who had cohabited, 73% of white adults eventually married someone they had lived with. Among Black adults, that figure was 46%. Nearly half of Black adults who had ever cohabited had never married by their early 40s.

The lazy interpretation would simply be that Black people aren’t marrying. The more useful question is, “Why does the transition from cohabitation to marriage differ so substantially?” 

Pew doesn’t answer that question, and neither should we without evidence. Employment may matter. Wealth may matter. Education may matter. Housing may matter. Relationship history may matter. Incarceration may matter. Cultural expectations may matter. Previous children and previous relationships may matter. Several of these conditions may interact.

The educational differences in Pew’s findings reinforce that complexity:

• Among people who had ever cohabited, 40% of those with a high school education or less first did so before age 20. 
• Among people with bachelor’s degrees, only 12% did. 
• Adults with bachelor’s degrees were also considerably more likely to eventually marry someone they had lived with: 77% compared with 59% among those with no education beyond high school.

These patterns don’t establish causation, but they do suggest that relationship formation doesn’t occur independent of economic and educational circumstances. Personal responsibility matters, but so does the environment in which people make decisions.

The Fatherhood Field’s Alternative to the Success Sequence

That’s one reason I appreciated the question Dr. Matisa Wilbon raises in her recent blog series: Where does the Success Sequence leave everyone else? Her argument isn’t that we should abandon a roadmap that may help a 16-year-old make wise decisions. It’s that fatherhood programs also encounter the 36-year-old whose children already exist, whose relationship already ended, and whose life can’t be returned to the starting line.

For those fathers and families, she proposes a Success Pathway. Rather than using someone’s previous decisions as the measure of success, that model asks whether the person is now moving toward stability, responsibility, healthier relationships, stronger parenting, better co-parenting, and continued growth.

Pew’s new findings make this distinction even more useful. Perhaps we now need to add another word to this conversation: transition.

The Success Sequence largely focuses on milestones — education, work, marriage, and children. But families live in the gray areas around those milestones. Dating becomes cohabitation. Cohabitation becomes marriage. Cohabitation sometimes becomes parenthood before marriage. Sometimes cohabitation ends. Sometimes marriage ends. Sometimes two people stop being romantic partners but remain parents for the rest of their lives. Sometimes another partner enters the family system.

The work of fatherhood often happens inside those transitions.

If a couple is already cohabiting, simply telling them that marriage should’ve come first doesn’t strengthen their relationship. Instead, we need to help them be thoughtful about what they’re building:

• Are they moving toward commitment? 
• Are they communicating well? 
• Are they financially stable? 
• Are they safe with one another? 
• Do they share expectations about marriage and children?

And if a couple already has a child, another set of questions becomes urgent: 

• Is the father fully engaged? 
• Does he understand his legal status as a parent? 
• Are both parents sharing caregiving responsibility? 
• Can they resolve disagreement without putting the child in the middle? 
• What happens to the father-child relationship if the romantic relationship ends?

These questions don’t compete with marriage. They recognize reality.

I remain comfortable telling a young person that completing an education, developing the ability to support oneself, choosing relationships carefully, marrying before having children, and creating a stable family can provide meaningful advantages. The evidence supports it.

I’m equally comfortable telling an unmarried father holding his newborn that his opportunity to become a good father didn’t expire because his life unfolded differently. The Success Sequence should be a roadmap, not a report card on human worth.

Children don’t choose whether their parents marry before they’re born. They don’t choose whether their parents cohabit, separate, divorce, reconcile, or form new relationships. What children need from adults isn’t an argument about whose family arrangement proves a political point. They need stability, safety, responsibility, adults who can communicate, and parents who understand that romantic relationships may end while parenting responsibilities remain. Whenever it’s safe and appropriate, they also need fathers who are visible, accountable, nurturing, and consistently engaged.

Pew has given us valuable information about how Americans are forming intimate relationships. Now we should go further. If America’s families are increasingly traveling through cohabitation on their way toward marriage, separation, parenthood, or some combination of the three, our research should follow the entire family through those transitions — including the father.

The next chapter of this conversation shouldn’t simply ask whether Americans are marrying. It should ask what happens to mothers, fathers, and children before marriage, inside marriage, outside marriage, and when relationships change.

When marriage isn’t the “go-to” family structure, fatherhood doesn’t disappear. Our responsibility is to become much better at seeing where the father exists, understanding how he’s engaged, and creating the conditions that help him remain the kind of father his children need.