When the first union comes to an end: Is it less distressing if we were cohabiting?

Using the British Household Panel Survey this paper explores the extent to which marital and cohabiting unions differ with respect to the short term effects of union dissolution on psychological distress. We test the hypothesis that spouses experience larger negative effects but the results show that this difference is not statistically significant once the presence of children is controlled for. Having children is found to be a major source of psychological distress when one is going through union dissolution. However, it does not explain high psychological distress which seems to be associated with “intrinsic” factors (the personality trait neuroticism) rather than with contextual factors.