Keywords

marriage, family, emerging adulthood

Abstract

Current demographic trends in the United States suggest that emerging adults delay marriage (Vespa, 2014), nonmarital cohabitation is the norm among this age group (National Marriage Project, 2012), and premarital sex—including noncommitted hooking up (Garcia, Reiber, Massey, & Merriwether, 2012)—is widely accepted (Pew Research Center, 2014). These trends collide with consistently high divorce rates (Amato, 2010; Cherlin, 2010), where up to one-third of emerging adults grow up in stepfamilies (Copen, Daniels, Vespa, & Mosher, 2012). Aside from high divorce rates, the United States is experiencing what some demogra- phers term “the great crossover,” whereby unmarried parenthood is overtaking married parenthood (Curtin, Ventura, & Martinez, 2014).

Original Publication Citation

Holmes, E.K., Brown, G., Shafer, K., & Stoddard, N.* (2017). “Healthy Transitions to Family Formation.” In Walker, L.P. & Nelson, L.J. (Eds.), Flourishing in Emerging Adulthood. New York: Oxford University Press.