Explaining Teen Childbearing and Cohabitation: Community Embeddedness and Primary Ties

This investigation examines whether access to social capital reduces the chance that teens will cohabit or have a nonmaritally conceived birth. Using data from a nationally representative panel study of eighth-grade girls and their parents, we hypothesize that girls who have (and whose families have) dense community ties as well as greater access to primary ties are less likely to have a nonmarital birth and to cohabit as teens and that community embeddedness has an effect net of the effects of primary ties. Our results support this hypothesis. An important policy implication is to increase social relations between adult networks and children that can serve to encourage stable, multigenerational values and discourage "off-time" family formation.