In Sub-Saharan Africa, fertility levels and desired family size remain amongthe highest in the world. Although it is widely accepted that formal marriageis intrinsically linked to parenthood, existing demographic studies on thevalue of children in Sub-Saharan Africa do not typically distinguish betweenchildbearing motivations for married women and those in informal unions. Sucha distinction is increasingly needed, both because of scattered ethnographicevidence suggesting that the value of children may be different for informalunions, and because of the increasing prevalence of informal unions in severalAfrican countries, particularly in urban areas and among the youngergenerations. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the marriagepractices may affect the value and cost of children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thestudy is based on data from the 1991 Cameroon Demographic Health Survey(CDHS), which is the only African Demographic Health Survey that containsquestions on type of union as well as on the value of children. Consequently,it provides a unique opportunity to quantify the value of children for womenin different types of unions