Sociodemographic Status, Parental Background, Childhood Family Structure, and Attitudes Toward Family Formation.

The article uses the National Survey of Families and Households to investigate effects of individual characteristics, parental background, and childhood living arrangements on adults' attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and nonmarital childbearing. This paper investigates the determinants of adults' attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and unmarried motherhood. These attitudes may be important for interpreting group differences in family behavior. Attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and non-marital childbearing are also important because it is through low rates of marriage and high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing that female-headed families are created. Yet prior studies have not examined attitudes toward unmarried motherhood. To be sure, prior studies examine attitudes toward other aspects of family life, but few employ nationally representative samples. Thus, while prior research provides important insights into understanding the correlates of attitudes toward marriage and divorce, these studies are limited in the determinant factors considered, they are often not generalizable to the national U.S. population, and they tell nothing about attitudes toward unmarried motherhood. This study, using national survey data, is a more comprehensive investigation of these attitudes. It includes both individual and parent characteristic and captures a wider variety of childhood family experiences.