Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.3390/socsci15020117

Publication Title

Social Sciences

Volume

15

Issue

2

Pages

117

Abstract

Cohabitation has become an increasingly common context for childrearing, yet children living with cohabiting parents often exhibit poorer academic outcomes than peers with married parents. This study examines whether these disparities stem from cohabitation itself, subsequent family transitions, or underlying mechanisms related to resources, stress, or selectivity. Using data from the Growing Up in Australia: Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), we follow 920 children born to cohabiting parents and track family structure changes alongside teacher-rated literacy and mathematics performance from ages 6 to 11 years. Generalized estimating equation models show that, although children whose parents transitioned to single-parent or other non-cohabiting arrangements initially appear to score lower academically, these differences are no longer significant once resource, stress, and selectivity variables are included. Instead, parental education, parental efficacy, homeownership, extracurricular participation, residential mobility, and parents’ region of origin more consistently predicts educational outcomes. Children with stably cohabiting parents and those whose parents later married do not differ significantly. Findings suggest that among children born to cohabiting parents in Australia, differences in later educational outcomes are largely explained by differences in parental education, efficacy, housing stability, and related factors, rather than by cohabitation or family instability alone.

Rights

© 2026 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "The authors are unable to share datafiles because the data is only available via contract. Interested parties may initiate access to the data contract process by contacting Australian Institute of Family Studies (https://aifs.gov.au/growing-up-in-australia)."

Original Publication Citation

Pribesh, S., Pulsipher, E. E., Dufur, M. J., Jarvis, J. A., Weisman, A., & Yue, Y. (2026). Cohabitation and child educational outcomes: An examination of family stability and transition in Australia. Social Sciences, 15(2), Article 117. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci15020117

ORCID

0000-0001-9157-3493 (Pribesh), 0009-0007-3869-166X (Weisman)

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