Well-being at mid-life: family predictors of continuity and change

In this chapter, we examine linkages between marital and childbearing patterns and levels of depression among late baby boom NLSY79 women when they were around age 30, and again at age 40, net of characteristics of their families of origin and their own early cognitive and psychosocial resources. Around age 30, women who had become mothers outside of marriage were more depressed than both the childless and women who had had marital first births; but this difference tended to fade by age 40. By age 40, remaining or becoming single was associated with increased depressive symptoms, but recently re-married women were also more depressed under certain circumstances.