Stability Rates of Same-Sex Couples: With and Without Children

Abstract

In contrast to earlier studies, several recent ones have claimed that stability rates among same-sex couples are similar to those of different-sex couples. This article reexamines these latest accounts and provides new evidence regarding stability rates using three large, nationally representative datasets from the United States and Canada. Confirming the earliest work, we find that same-sex couples are more likely to break up than different-sex couples. We find that the gap in stability is larger for couples with children, the very group for which concerns about stability are the most important.

Keywords:

• Children
• divorce
• same-sex relationships
• stability of relationships

Notes

1 See, for example, Blumstein and Schwartz (1983); Kurdek (1995, 2004); Andersson et al. (2006); Balsam, Beauchaine, Rothblum, and Solomon (2008); or Rosenfeld (2014).

2 There have been several surveys of this literature: Allen (2015), Biblarz and Stacey (2010), Biblarz and Savci (2010), Goldberg (2010), Marks (2012), Nock (2001), Schumm (2005, 2011), Sweet (2009), Reczek, Spiker, Liu, and Crosnoe (2016). Ultimately the relationship between the parents and the children would like to be known. In our data we are not able to identify “biological” children of either family type.

3 This claim is based on the most recent large random sample findings: Allen, Pakaluk, and Price (2013, 2014), Allen (2013), and Sullins (2015a, 2015b).

4 There is a long history of research regarding the consequences of divorce for children: Amato (2001); Amato (2010); Amato and Anthony (2014); Amato and Cheadle (2005); Dempsey (2013); Fomby and Bosick (2013); and Strohschein (2010), to name a few.

5 Even the expectation of instability can lead to different family investments and lower child outcomes.

6 Some cross-section datasets are retrospective, although, this seldom allows for more than a construction of the start and possible end of a relationship. Most retrospective datasets contain no information on most time-varying variables. Lau (2012) uses two British retrospective datasets and finds same-sex unions relatively unstable, but does not consider the presence of children.

7 From http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/rights-freedoms/trudeau.

8 For example, Blumstein and Schwartz (1983); Johnson (1991); Green, Bettinger, and Zacks (1996); and Gartrell, Rodas, Deck, and Peyser (2006).

9 See Kurdek (1998, 2004); Rothblum (2009); Schumm (2010); Biblarz and Stacey (2010); or Patterson (2013). The finding of “no-difference” was often repeated or asserted in related articles: Redding (2008); Short, Riggs, Perlesz, Brown, and Kane (2007); Goldberg (2010); Jennings, Mellish, Tasker, Lamb, and Golombok (2014).

10 For example, Goldberg and Kuvalanka (2012) and Potter (2012).

11 The number of studies that have explicitly examined the stability of same-sex couples is quite small: 16 papers, of which four use biased samples.

12 This study was updated in Wiik, Seierstad, and Noack (2012). Using the updated registry data, they concluded “… the current study confirmed that same-sex couples still have a significantly higher divorce risk … and that female couples are more divorce prone….” (p. 18, 2012).

13 In this study we do not consider the gender of the same-sex couple because the sample sizes become too small when we parse the couples by the presence of children. However, in unreported regressions, we do find that lesbian couples are far less stable than gay couples.

14 In fact, sample-size limits prevent us from considering only married couples. Even in Canada, where same-sex marriage has been available since 2005, only a trivial number of same-sex couples in the SLID are actually married.

15 For Statistics Canada a cohabitating couple living as married is referred to as a "common-law" couple. This is equivalent to a "cohabitating" couple in the United States See http://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/concepts/definitions/marital02.

16 One of the most important differences across the three datasets is how same-sex couples are measured. For the SLID these are couples of the same sex who self-identify as a conjugal couple living together. In the HCMST it is the best guess based on the self-reported nature of the relationship. With the SIPP it is couples of the same-sex who have lived together for at least 6 months.

17 Unfortunately, our data also has left-hand censoring. That is, some couples separate before the start date and are not included in the data, and some couples enter the data already a couple with no indication of the start of the union. In order to deal with at least some of the left-hand censoring, we interact the number of children in the household with the indicator for a same-sex couple and allow it to vary over time. This specification gives virtually identical estimates for the full sample in the HCMST and the SIPP analysis.

18 Each dataset uses weighted observations, and covariates are allowed to vary over time.

19 Although, we do not break our same-sex sample by gender, for the SLID this low survival rate is driven mostly by lesbian couples.