Have Teens’ Cohabitation, Marriage, and Childbearing Goals Changed Since the Great Recession?

The uneven recovery of the post-Great Recession years has been accompanied by changing family behaviors throughout the U.S. For teens, whose family building years are largely still to come, these broader shifts may have influenced their expectations of cohabitation, marriage, or childbearing in the future. Further, given variation in gender socialization, teen girls and boys may think differently about their future family behaviors. In this project, we analyzed cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing expectations and intentions among teens ages 15–19 by gender using National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) data, representing the years 2012–2018. Since the Great Recession, the vast majority of teens continued to expect to marry and intend to have children, with less certainty but growth nonetheless in cohabitation expectations. By 2018, gender differentials in cohabitation expectations persisted, gender differences in fertility intentions disappeared, and there were no gender differences in marital intentions. In general, we found little evidence of a weakening of teens’ expectations and intentions to engage in family formation behaviors in the years since the Great Recession, though it remains to be seen whether teens will actually cohabit, marry, or have children as they move through the life course.