10 Reasons to Put Marriage Before Your Baby Carriage

The share of parents who are cohabiting is on the rise, according to a new Pew study, with 1-in-4 kids now born to cohabiting couples. Despite the increasing popularity of cohabiting parenthood, cohabitation doesn't measure up to marriage, especially for children. Here are 10 reasons to buck the cohabiting parenthood trend—for your kids’ sake:

1. There’s still no better way to lock in the commitment that makes it easier to weather the stresses of raising junior, than tying the knot in front of your family and friends before junior arrives.

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2. When you’re raising kids, you definitely don’t want to deal with the extra relationship drama like infidelity and domestic violence associated with cohabiting.

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3. You're also much more likely to take the long-term financial view and to save and invest more if you get and stay married.

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4. Speaking of money, you and your kids are less likely to experience poverty within marriage.

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5. Your kids are also a lot less likely to toke up if you’re married to their mother/father.

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6. And your kids are less than half as likely to struggle in school and end up with one of these:

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7. Oh, yeah, and they are less likely to be depressed if mom and dad are married.

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8. In fact, getting married halves the odds that you and your parenting co-pilot will call it quits.

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9. Indeed, for men, you are significantly more likely to enjoy a close and stable relationship with your children—if you get and stay married to their mother.

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10. So, before you have kids, in the immortal words of Beyonce:

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W. Bradford Wilcox is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Family Studies and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Alysse ElHage is Editor of the Institute for Family Studies blog.