Cohabitation in the U.S.

1. Cohabitation in the U.S. Till Death do us part?

2. Cold Hard Facts • Cohabitation among couples has increased so much in the past two decades that the majority marriages and remarriages now begin as cohabitating relationships • Cohabitating couples tend to be of slightly lower socioeconomic status, more liberal, less religious and more supportive of equal gender roles • About ¾ of cohabitating couples reports plans to marry, and while black and white couples are equally likely to expect to marry, blacks are much less likely to do so

3. Statistical difficulties and inaccuracies Cohabitation produces • Since cohabitation is a rather recent phenomenon, therefore it is difficult to assess the effects it has on children of cohabitating relationships and other long term effects • Many children born to ‘single mothers’ in fact are born into two-parent households, thus the negative connotations we attach to ‘single mothers’ and ‘unwed fathers’ arises primarily from our societies obsession of marriage as a necessity • The attempt to gauge the meaning of cohabitation by comparing it to marriage produces problems because the meaning of marriage is dynamic and undergoing constant change as is the meaning of cohabitation itself

4. More difficulties • Many statistics vary depending on the researchers themselves. While some find that the weak institutionalization of cohabitation causes cohabitors to report lower levels of commitment (duh!) and lower levels of relationship happiness than do married people, others find that among cohabitating couples that have plans to marry the relationship quality is quite similar to that of married people

5. Cohabiting couples less likely to pool income=cohabitation women worse off than married women Similarities Division of household labor is similar (enactment of traditional gender roles increases the likelihood of marriage Differences Cohabitors tend to define marriage in more individualistic terms More equal gender roles and incomes=more successful cohabitation; this is not true in marriage Married couples tend to be more homogamous in age, religion, and race-ethnicity Similarities/Differences between Marriage and Cohabitation

6. Explanations for the rise in cohabitation among couples • Rising individualism (increased importance of individual goals) and secularism (decline in religious adherence) • “Sexual Revolution” of recent decades has all but erased the taboo of cohabitation • In cases of divorced singles, people will cohabit as they learn either through experience that marriage may not be permanent

7. Arguments over Cohabitation • Cohabitation viewed as an alternative to marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage • Cohabitation is not an alternative to marriage, just a stage in the marriage process (prevalent in white women) • Cohabitation as an alternative to marriage (more popular among black and Puerto Rican women in terms of childbearing) • Cohabitation is not an alternative to marriage, but an alternative to conventional singlehood

8. Possible effects of Cohabitation • It is too soon to tell the long term affects of cohabitation in the U.S. on children, the institution of marriage, and on the participants themselves. • More research on exactly what cohabitation means to cohabitating couples is needed to increase our understanding of possible diversity in the meaning of cohabitation across gender, social, and race-ethnic lines • Overall, cohabitation indicates how family life in the United States is being transformed, some argue radically, with legal marriage losing its primacy as the manifest center of family ties