Mental Illness as a Barrier to Marriage Among Mothers With Out-of-Wedlock Births
Abstract: This study explored how mental illness shapes transitions to marriage among unwed mothers using augmented data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. We estimated proportional hazard models to assess the effects of mental illness on the likelihood of marriage over a five year period following a non-marital birth. History of diagnosed mental illness was obtained from the survey respondents' prenatal medical records. We found that mothers with diagnosed mental illness were about two thirds as likely to marry as mothers without mental illness, even after controlling for demographic characteristics, and that the association is explained little by measures of human capital, relationship stability, partner selection, cognitive ability, and substance use.
One third of births in the United States are to unmarried parents. The proportions are considerably higher than that for minority parents. While many unmarried mothers eventuallymarry (82 percent of whites, 62 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of blacks, according to Graefe and Lichter 2002)...