"If you were a child living in Naperville, Ill., your chances of living with two married parents, a householder in the labor force, in an owned home or above the poverty level were highest or next to highest among children in all cities with at least 100,000 people, according to a report released...by the U.S. Census Bureau.

...According to rankings of cities of 100,000 or more population, Naperville had only 1 percent of children living in unmarried-partner households, and only 2 percent were not sons or daughters of the householder. Also, the city had one of the lowest poverty rates for children under 18 (2 percent) and the lowest rate of children in homes receiving public assistance (0.4 percent). "

(Source: U.S. Census Bureau, "Oh, To Be a Kid in Naperville!  Census Bureau Reports on Children and Their Homes," March 16, 2004; http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001713.html .)

"Living arrangements influence children's daily interactions with adult role models and can affect the potential economic resources available for such things as education, personal development, and extracurricular activities. One particularly influential characteristic is whether children are living with two married parents. Studies have shown that children living with two married parents have more daily interactions, such as eating meals together and talking or playing, than those living with two unmarried parents." 

(Source: Terry Lugaila and Julia Overturf "Children and the Households They Live In: 2000," Census 2000 Special Reports, U.S. Census Bureau, CENSR-14, February 2004; http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/censr-14.pdf .)

As long as no-fault divorce remains the law of the land, a significant lowering of the divorce rate may not happen without encouraging parents considering divorce to value the welfare of their children above their own personal interests. One way to do that is to point out that for most American children, the divorce of parents is more traumatic than the death of a parent. At least that is the implication of a study by Jay D. Teachman of Western Washington University, who studied the impact of childhood living arrangements on factors related to the likelihood of women having a successful marriage.

Starting with data from the 1995 round of the National Survey of Family Growth, Teachman focused his attention on 4,947 women who married between 1970 and 1989. He found that women who grew up with two biological parents were far less likely than women who grew up in alternative family arrangements to form "high-risk" marriages: they married later, had higher levels of education, married men with more education, were less likely to have experienced premarital conception or birth, and were less likely to cohabit.

He also discovered that the marital risk factors of women who experienced a parental death were virtually identical to those who grew up with both parents, whereas numerous statistically significant correlations were found among women who grew up under other circumstances, including parental divorce, parental remarriage, and a single mother home. The highest correlations were found in two childhood living arrangements: "divorce only" and "divorce and remarriage." Each were correlated with six marital risk factors: early marriage, teen childbearing, being married with less than a high school education, both spouses with less than a high school education, having a husband more than five years older, and a teen marriage with a husband more than five years older (p < .05 for all 12 measures).

Interestingly, parental death and remarriage (in contrast to parental death only) was correlated with early marriage and early childbearing, although not the four other risk factors as was the case with parental divorce only and parental remarriage after divorce. This led Teachman to suggest that financial distress does not explain the negative effects of some childhood living arrangements, as remarriage has been positively associated with more economic resources for families and children. Teachman theorizes that the low risk factors associated with parental death may be related to the possibility that "the death of a parent may rally the support of family and friends to an extent exceeding that which occurs following parental divorce."