Cohabitation is an integral part of family research; however, little work examines cohabitation among teenagers or links between cohabitation and teenage childbearing. Drawing on the National Survey of Family Growth (2006-10), we examine family formation activities (i.e., cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing) of 3,945 15-19 year old women from the mid 1990s through 2010. One-third (34%) of teenagers cohabit, marry, or have a child. Teenage cohabitation and marriage are both positively associated with higher odds of having a child. The vast majority of single pregnant teenagers do not form a union before the birth of their child; only 22% cohabit and 5% marry. Yet most single pregnant teenagers eventually cohabit, 59% did so by the child's third birthday and about 9% marry. Cohabitation is an important part of the landscape of the adolescent years, and many teenage mothers described as "single mothers" are actually in cohabiting relationships.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 20. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 August 2026.
All research outputs
#2,362,692
of 34,351,437 outputs
Outputs from Population Research and Policy Review
#104
of 851 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#19,824
of 274,991 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Population Research and Policy Review
#2
of 8 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,351,437 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 851 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 274,991 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 8 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 6 of them.
