Cohabitation In A Brave New World Analysis

A lot has changed in the past few decades, not to mention centuries. Perhaps you’ve heard your grandparents, or any adult in general, talking about how much the world is changing. In the past few decades, commitment has gone on a rollercoaster. At times it’s going uphill-marriage rates are up, divorce rates are down, and people are happy in their relationships. At other times, it has been quite the opposite. In A Brave New World, they show a glimpse of a possible future society; the novel serves as a warning to help the world slow down when it comes to technology and love. The expression of love has evolved throughout time due to the decrease of chivalry and the increase in divorce rates because of the change of “steps” in a relationship. One

Cohabitation is “to live together as if married, usually without legal or religious sanction; to live together in an intimate relationship” (Dictionary.com). In the past thirty years, there have been several changes in trends of American families. Cohabitation of males and females has been happening earlier and more frequently resulting in it being viewed as normal (Waite 19). The median age of first marriage has risen approximately by six years (Morris). Between late 1940s and early 1960s the amount of women who have cohabitated by age twenty-five increased by thirty percent. The increase in cohabitation correlates with a decline in marriage (Waite 20). You might say that couples who were already living together no longer felt the need to get married because they were already living together. **Cohabitation can lead to intimacy, so if a couple is living together before marriage they are likely to be intimate before marriage. At one point in time, cohabitation and intimacy would have been unacceptable before marriage but now they are seen as the norm. In A Brave New World, they mock that at a time, children having sex would have been frowned upon. “…erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed” (Huxley 34). People are thankfully arrested today for crazy

In 1990, seventy-one percent of sixty-four million American children lived in a two parent household. Fifty-eight percent lived with their biological parents. Since the 1970s, there has been a huge increase in the amount of children living with single or divorced mothers. This only is right considering the increase in single women having children, although not all of those women don’t have a significant other. Currently 7.3 percent of children live with an unmarried parent, 9.1 percent live with a divorced parent and 7.4 percent live with a separated or widowed parent. Every year since the 1970s, over one million children have been affected by divorce (Shino and Quinn). Nowadays every where you look, someone has divorced parents. It could be your own parents, your best friend’s parents, your classmate’s parents or even your teacher. In 1988, fifteen percent of children lived with a separated or divorced parent, while 7.3 million more children lived with a stepparent. It is estimated that almost half of the babies born today will spend a portion of their life living in a one-parent family (Shino and