Cohabitation, Marriage, and Divorce

1242 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Advantages of cohabitation on society

1.0 Introduction

Cohabitation is and has been a norm in almost all societies in the world. It has been perceived as the stepping stone to marriage by the modern generation. In Whitman, (2003), cohabitation has grown so widely that there is one cohabiting couple out of 7 marriages in 2010 as compared to 1 out of 90 marriages in 1960. According to her, the attitude towards the whole of marriage institution has changed drastically over time. In the same article, currently in the US, of 3 single women, 1 chooses to live with their partners before marriage as compared to the 1950’s where only 1 out of 10 chooses so. Another statistics reveal that, the number of cohabitating partners have increased exponentially from 430,000 in 1960 to 5.4 million couples in 2005 (Fowler, R, 2008). From this shocking statistics, we ought to find out the advantages and disadvantages of cohabiting.

Firstly, the meaning of cohabitation and marriage must be clearly defined before more research is done. From the Concise English Dictionary (9th Edition), cohabitation come from the word ‘cohabit’ which is defined as “live together, [especially] as husband and wife without being married to one another” while marriage is defined as “the legal union of a man and woman in order to live together and often to have children”. In today’s terms, long-term cohabitation is more known as an alternative to marriage. Couples now prefer cohabitation because of the ‘freedom’ and the ‘guarantee of compatibility’ that it allegedly offers.

However, the issue about cohabitation that is questioned is the stability of the relationship. We know that cohabitation is recognized by any country in the world as a legal union of a man and woman. The question arises, ‘Will cohabitat...

... middle of paper ...

...ation’, Family Matters, pp. 24-27, viewed 26th January 2012,

Popenoe D., Whitehead B.D. (1999), ‘Should we live together? What young adults need to know about cohabitation before marriage.’ THE NATIONAL MARRIAGE PROJECT : The Next Generation Series, New Jersey, viewed 14 January, 2012,

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, (1995), 9th ed, Oxford University Press Inc., New York.

Whitehead, B.D. and Popenoe, D. (2000), ‘Sex without strings, relationships without rings’, The State of Our Unions, The Social Health of Marriage in America, The National Marriage Project, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, p. 13, New Jersey.

Whitman, S. (2003), ‘Shacking up: The smart girl's guide to living in sin without getting burned’, Broadway, Washington.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Arlene Skolnick Ground For Marriage

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article “Grounds for Marriage: How Relationships Succeed or Fail” by Arlene Skolnick talks a lot about how the attitudes towards marriages now a days is much different then what peoples attitudes have been in the past. The article talks about how there are two parts of every marriage “the husband’s and the wife’s”. This article touches on the affects cohabitation, and how cohabitation is more likely to happen among younger adults. This article talks about how the younger adults are more inclined to cohabitate before marriage, and that currently the majority of couples that are interring in to marriage have previously lived together. The article stats that some of the Possible reasons for couples to live together before marriage might include shifting norms

    Read More

  • Critical Response: The Downside Of Living Together

    1023 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her text, she states that cohabitation has become very famous in the United States. Jay also reports that young adults in their twenties see cohabitation as a preventive way to avoid divorce. The perception that she contradicts by pointing out that people who cohabit before marriage are more at risk of divorce because once they are married they become unsatisfied of their marriage, she calls this phenomenon the cohabitation effect. The author also punctuates that the problem of the cohabitation effect is that lovers do not really discuss their personal perception of cohabitation or what it will mean for them. Instead, they slide into cohabitation, get married, and divorce after realizing that they made a mistake. She proves her point by presenting a research which shows that women and men have a different interpretation of cohabitating prior marriage. Furthermore, the author emphasizes her argument by saying that the problem is not starting a cohabiting relationship but leaving that relationship which can be the real issue after all the time and money invested. Finally, Jay indicates that American’s mindset about their romantic relationship is changing and can be illustrated by the fact that more Americans started to see cohabitation as a commitment before

    Read More

  • Cohabitation In Canada Case Study

    1502 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cohabitation plays a huge part in Canadian society, 1 in 7 families are a cohabitating union (Zheng & Pollard 2000). The laws regarding cohabitation depend on the province (ibid). The years of union ranges from one year to three years (Zheng & Pollard 2000). Quebec has the largest proportion of cohabitating couples out of all the provinces (ibid). Majority of cohabitating couples found in this study were never married (ibid). Economic circumstances will determine how the couple decides to dissolve the union: either by separation or marriage (Zheng & Pollard 2000). The amount of economic resources a cohabitating couple have is less than that of married couples (ibid). Zhang and Pollard (2000) suggests that economic circumstances cohabitating

    Read More

  • Tom Stoppard's Arcadia

    2133 Words  | 5 Pages

    Oxford English Dictionary Online. Colorado College Tutt Library, Colorado Springs, CO. Web 19 April 2015.

    Read More

  • James Q. Wilson's The Origins Of The Ambivalent Acceptance Of Divorce

    978 Words  | 2 Pages

    No matter who you are one day in life you are going to meet someone who takes your breath away. Someone who you feel you could just simply not live without and when that day comes so will the day that you decide between marriage or cohabitation. In James Q. Wilson’s article “Cohabitation Instead of Marriage” and Andrew J. Cherlin’s article “The Origins of the Ambivalent Acceptance of Divorce.” cover many marital relationship topics such as history, money, children, and culture.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Marital Decline And Marital Resilience Perspective

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    Marriage is the legal or formally recognized union of a man and a woman, or two people or the same sex as partners in a relationship. Marriage rates in the United States have changed drastically since the last 90’s and early 2000 years (Cherlin 2004). Marital decline perspective and marital resilience perspective are the two primary perspectives and which we believe are the results from the decline. The marital decline perspective is the view that the American culture has become increasingly individualistic and preoccupied with personal happiness (Amato, 2004). The change in attitudes has changed the meaning of marriage as a whole, from a formal institution

    Read More

  • Cohabitation and its Effect on Marital Stability in the US

    1723 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cohabitation, over the last two decades has gone from being a relatively uncommon social phenomenon to a commonplace one and has achieved this prominence quite quickly. A few sets of numbers convey both the change and its rapidity. The percentage of marriages preceded by cohabitation rose from about 10% for those marrying between 1965 and 1974 to over 50% for those marrying between 1990 and 1994 (Bumpass and Lu 1999, Bumpass & Sweet 1989); the percentage is even higher for remarriages. Secondly, the percentage of women in their late 30s who report having cohabited at least once rose from 30% in 1987 to 48% in 1995. Given a mere eight year tome window, this is a striking increase. Finally, the proportion of all first unions (including both marriages and cohabitation) that begin as cohabitations rose from 46% for unions formed between 1980 and 1984 to almost 60% for those formed between 1990 and 1994 (Bumpass and Lu 1999).

    Read More

  • Cohabitation In A Brave New World Analysis

    2189 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Marriage Culture in the United States

    1252 Words  | 3 Pages

    This societal acceptance has made it easier for couples to live together without being married. Many of these men and women decide to live together because they consider the cohabitation a "trial marriage." They fe...

    Read More

  • Cohabitation Vs. Marital Unions

    390 Words  | 1 Pages

    According to Clarkberg, Stolzenberg and Waite, from the University of Chicago, cohabitation is preferred over marriage by a specific group of people defined through their preferences in certain attitudes and values. According to this study, people chose to enter into either marriage or cohabitation depending on their views on procreation and relationships. However, the article also includes a study of peoples choice relying on views towards leisure time allotment, household labor division, employment, economic resources and relationships with immediate and extended family as well as with religion.

    Read More

  • The Risks of Premarital Cohabitation

    2936 Words  | 6 Pages

    It is not a new thought that today’s young Americans are facing issues, problems and difficult decisions that past generations never had to question. In a world of technology, media, and a rough economy, many young adults in America are influenced by a tidal wave of opinions and life choices without much relevant advice from older generations. The Generation Y, or Millennial, group are coming of age in a confusing and mixed-message society. One of these messages that bombard young Americans is the choice of premarital cohabitation. Premarital cohabitation, or living together without being married (Jose, O’Leary & Moyer, 2010), has increased significantly in the past couple of decades and is now a “natural” life choice before taking the plunge into marriage. Kennedy and Bumpass (2008) state that, “The increase in cohabitation is well documented,such that nearly two thirds of newlyweds have cohabited prior to their first marriage”(as cited in Harvey, 2011, p. 10), this is a striking contrast compared with statistics of our grandparents, or even parents, generations. It is such an increasing social behavior that people in society consider cohabitation “necessary” before entering into marriage. Even more, young Americans who choose not to cohabitate, for many different reasons, are looked upon as being “old-fashioned”, “naive”, or “unintelligent”. This pressure for young people to cohabitate before marriage is a serious “modern-day” challenge; especially when given research that states, “... most empirical studies find that couples who cohabited prior to marriage experience significantly higher odds of marital dissolution than their counterparts who did not cohabit before marriage”, stated by Jose (2010) and colleagues (as c...

    Read More

  • Sociological Analysis of Divorce

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    Every year approximately 2.4 million marriages occur.Out of those,2.1 millionwill file for divorce in the United States. These marriage and divorce rates have significantly increased since the years past(Coltrane and Adams, 364).According to Schoen, in the 1950’s, 15 out of 1,000 marriages ended in divorce.In the 1970’s, the rates of divorcedoubled,increasing to 40 per 1,000 marriages. Currently, the rate of marriages resulting in divorce remains the same. Most marriages are ending within seven years ofthemarriage for multiple different reasons. Sociologists haveestablisheddivorce as a social problem from the rise in divorcerates due to the early year of marriages (2006).

    Read More

  • Cohabitation Before Marriage

    1668 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bruce Wydick argued that, “cohabitation may be narrowly defined as an intimate sexual union between two unmarried partners who share the same living quarter for a sustained period of time’’ (2). In other words, people who want to experience what being in a relationship truly is, tend to live under one roof and be more familiar with one-another. Couples are on the right path to set a committed relationship where the discussion about marriage is considered as the next step. However, many people doubt the fact as to live or not together with their future partners. Some of them think about it as an effective way to have a chance to get to know a potential husband/spouse. Meanwhile, others completely deny the idea due to their disagreements with certain religious beliefs. Wydick suggested that, “the increase in premarital cohabitation is a product of a general movement within western society away from traditional ideas about marriage, divorce, birth control, abortion, women’s rights, and a host of other related issues” (4). Consequently, now people are more open-minded, meaning that they accept the idea of pre-cohabitation mainly as a social institution. People should live together before they get married because they have a chance to test their partnership and avoid the problems that may arise in the future.

    Read More

  • Advantages And Disadvantages Of Cohabitation

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since 1960s, cohabitation has been gaining popularity and the number has been increasing dramatically (Nicole Martin,2013). Majority of today’s marriages results froms cohabitating relationships (Smock, Huang, Manning, Bergstorm, 2006). Data from 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) showed that over 60% of women aged 25 to 39 have cohabited at least once (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2006).

    Read More

  • Living Together Essay

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    In today’s society, a majority of young couples are taking the opposite route when it comes to preparing for marriage. Instead of waiting till their newlyweds to move in together, many couples have decided to move in together. They believe that by living together, the divorce rate is decreased significantly. This idea of living together before marriage baffles a lot of people who are pro and against the idea. Yet, when you think about it for a moment, it does kind of make sense. Compared to previous generations, millennials would rather live together to decide whether marriage is in their future. There have been arguments for and against this idea of couples moving in together.

    Read More

More about Cohabitation, Marriage, and Divorce

Open Document