Cohabitation before marriage on the rise

There has been an explosion in cohabitation before marriage, according to researchers.

However, recently they have observed a significant shift in the reasons that unmarried couples live together. Only 9 percent of men and 5 percent of women report that they are living together as a test run for marriage. Spending time together is the most frequent reason couples live together today, Sharon Jackson reports in an article entitled, “Couple study debunks ‘trial marriage’ notion” (USA Today).

Most unmarried couples who live together don’t actually make a decision to do so, according to researchers. Almost 66 percent report that “it just sort of happened” or that they “slid into it.” Only 33 percent talked about living together in advance and then made a joint decision to do so.

How many unmarried couples are living together? The 2008 census reports that there are 13.6 million unmarried, heterosexual couples living together. “Researchers say that 50 percent to 60 percent of couples who marry today lived together first; some note that 70 percent of young adults will cohabit. Most couples who live together either marry or break up within two years,” Jackson reports.

A majority of young people between the ages of 20-24 now believes that it is OK for couples to live together even if they are not considering marriage. Fifty-seven percent in that age group approve of unmarried couples living together, 24 percent do not approve of living together and 19 percent do not have an opinion.

In essence, researchers say that the majority of people in their early 20s have adopted an attitude of “live and let live.”

Not all couples living together are young and childless. Thirty-nine percent of unmarried couples have at least one child in the household. Unfortunately, the odds of their staying together are not good. In fact, the odds of married couples being together two years after the birth of a child are six times greater than those for unmarried couples living together, according to a study by Galena Rhoades and Scott Stanley.

Religious young people are less likely to live together before marriage, although many do. According to researchers, “49 percent of dating couples and 30 percent of couples who cohabit surveyed agree that ‘my religious beliefs suggest that it is wrong for people to live together without being married’” (USA Today).

How happy are couples who live together before marriage? Studies show that the answer to this question has remained the same over time. All studies show that couples who live together before marriage are, on average, less happy with their marriages than those who do not.

These less-happy couples have poorer communication skills, more marital conflict and higher rates of domestic violence, according to Rhoades and Stanley. In addition, men who cohabitate first were found to be less dedicated to their partners than men who did not cohabitate first.

Of course, these results are general. There are couples who live together before marriage who create very happy marriages. Nevertheless, the results of new studies generally show that Bob Dylan is still on target, “The times they are a-changin.’”