Naomi Elliott for Vox
After about two years of dating, Matt Garville, 38, made some space in his closet for his girlfriend, Aloria Rucker, 31. At the time, Rucker was living with a roommate in Brooklyn but spending most nights with Garville at his roommate-less apartment in Hoboken, he says, so the move made sense. The couple agreed they were in the relationship for the long haul, with marriage on the horizon. But first, a necessary step: cohabitation. “It’s kind of like an interview process,” Garville says…..Story continues…
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Source: Vox
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Critics:
Contemporary objections to cohabiting couples include religious opposition to non-marital unions, social pressure for couples to get married, and potential effects of cohabitation on a child’s development. The rise in the number of cohabiting couples and children born out of wedlock in the Western world has made cohabitation a strong focus of sociological research.
The rise in cohabiting couples in the United States, from around 450,000 in 1960 to 7.5 million in 2011 has been accompanied by US research performed on child development within cohabiting households. Opponents of cohabitation say non-marital parenting is an unsuitable environment for a child’s development. One study from 2002 correlated lower numeracy skills and higher delinquency to children of cohabiting couples.
However, recent studies that control for factors including poverty, the educational level of parents and violence in the home show children of cohabiting couples are developmentally similar to peers of comparable married couples. In 2001, researchers compared teenage children in the United States living in a cohabiting household (a single mother and her boyfriend who was not related to the teenager) against peers in single-parent households.
The results showed white and Hispanic teenagers had lower performance in school, greater risk of suspension or expulsion than peers from single-parent households, and the same rate of behavioral and emotional problems. A study on the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth found increases in both the prevalence and duration of unmarried cohabitation. The study found that 40% of children in the United States would live in a cohabiting household by age 12, and children born to single mothers were more likely than those born to married mothers to live in a cohabiting household.
The percentage of women ages 19–44 who had ever cohabited increased from 45% in 1995 to 54% in 2002. In 2002, 63% of women who graduate from high school were found to spend some time cohabiting, compared to only 45% of women with a four-year college degree. Cohabiting couples who have children often get married. One study found that children born of parents who cohabit are 90% more likely to end up living in households with married parents than children born to single mothers. 67% of unmarried Hispanic mothers are expected to marry, while 40% of African American mothers are expected to marry.
Studies have found that religious affiliation correlates with cohabitation and marriage entry.People frequently cite religious reasons for their opposition to cohabitation. The Roman Catholic Church and nearly all mainstream Protestant denominations around the world oppose cohabitation and consider it to be the sin of fornication. However, others, such as the Church of England “welcome cohabiting couples in the Church and encourage them to regard cohabitation as a prelude to Christian marriage.”
Religion can also lead to societal pressures against cohabitation especially within highly religious communities. Some couples may refrain from cohabitation because one or both partners fear disappointing or alienating conservative family members. Young adults who grew up in families that oppose cohabitation have lower rates than their peers. The increase in cohabitation in the United States and other developed nations has been linked to the secularization of those countries.
Researchers have noted that changes in the religious demographics of a society have accompanied the rise in cohabitation. Non-marital and same-sex relationships are forbidden by the Islamic law of Zina, and cohabitation is against the law in many Muslim majority countries including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Oman, Mauritania,United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Yemen.
Conflicting studies on the effect of cohabitation on subsequent marriage have been published. In countries where the majority of people disapprove of unmarried individuals living together, or a minority of the population cohabits before marriage, marriages resulting from cohabitation are more prone to divorce. But in a study on European countries, those where around half of the population cohabits before marriage, cohabitation is not selective of divorce-prone individuals, and no difference in couples that have cohabited before and after marriage is observed.
In countries such as Italy, the increased risk of marital disruption for people who experienced premarital cohabitation can be entirely attributed to the selection of the most divorce-prone into cohabitation. In 2002, the CDC found that for married couples the likelihood percentage of the relationship ending after five years is 20%, for unmarried cohabitators the likelihood percentage is 49%. After 10 years the likelihood percentage for the relationship to end is 33% for married couples and 62% for unmarried cohabitators.
One German study found that in regions with high rates of childbirth to cohabitating parents, no negative effect is observed in cohabitation. The study states “union stability of cohabiting mothers is positively related to their prevalence”. A 2004 study of 136 couples (272 individuals) from researchers at the University of Denver found differences among couples that cohabited before engagement, after engagement, or not until marriage.
The longitudinal study collected survey data before marriage and 10 months into marriage, with findings suggesting those who cohabit before engagement are at greater risk for poor marital outcomes than those who cohabit only after engagement or at marriage. A follow-up survey by the researches of over 1,000 married men and women married in the past 10 years found those who moved in with a lover before engagement or marriage reported significantly lower quality marriages and a greater possibility of a separation than other couples.
About 20% of those who cohabited before getting engaged had since suggested splitting – compared with only 12% of those who only moved in together after getting engaged and 10% who did not cohabit prior to marriage. Another 2004 study of 92 couples linked communication to cohabitation and instability. They found that married couples who cohabited before they were married had more negative problem-solving and communication skills. They also found that those who had cohabited expressed more (verbal) aggression throughout their conversations.
This negative communication could be contributing to the cohabitation effect and causing a larger amount of marital instability. The researchers from Denver suggest that relationships with pre-engagement cohabitation “may wind up sliding into marriage”, whereas those that only cohabit post engagement or marriage make a more clear decision. This could explain their 2006 study of 197 heterosexual couples finding that men who cohabited with their spouse before engagement were less dedicated than men who cohabited only after engagement or not at all before marriage.
In some heterosexual couples, women are more likely to understand cohabitation as an intermediary step preceding marriage, and men more likely to perceive it without an explicit connection to marriage. An analysis of data from the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth data from 1988, 1995, and 2002 suggests that the positive relationship between premarital cohabitation and marital instability has weakened for more recent birth and marriage cohorts, as the total number of couples cohabiting before marriage has increased.
Later CDC work found that between 2002 and 2006-2010, the number of couples in opposite-sex cohabiting relationships increased from 9.0% to 11.2% for women, and from 9.2% to 12.2% for men. Drawing on the 2006–2008 data, Princeton University researchers examined whether and to what extent variation in premarital cohabitation experiences influence marital stability. They found that the relationship between cohabitation and marital instability is complex and depends in part on marriage cohort, race/ethnicity, and marriage plans.
Their analyses reveal that a ‘cohabitation effect’ exists only for women married prior to 1996, and that, until marriage plans are considered, there is no cohabitation effect among women married since 1996. Recent research from 2011 by the Pew Research Center has found that the number of couples that cohabit before marriage has increased. 44% of adults (and more than half of 30- to 49-year-olds) say they have cohabited at some point. Nearly two-thirds of adults who ever cohabited (64%) say they thought about it as a step toward marriage.
The report also notes a trend toward rising public acceptance of cohabiting couples over the years. Most Americans now say the rise in unmarried couples living together either makes no difference to society (46%) or is good for society (9%). A 2012 study found that, among cohabiting individuals, those who were engaged prior to cohabitation or had “definite plans for marriage” were linked to lower risks of marital instability among women, but the relationship was not observed with men.
One study on low to moderate income couples living with minor children found that respondents who became sexually involved within the first month of their relationship were correlated to lower scores of relationship quality among women. Another study found respondents to a mail-in survey self-reported higher levels of commitment in the cohabiting group, as well as lower relationship satisfaction and more negative communication.
A 2018 study found that cohabiting before marriage was linked to a lower risk of divorce during the first year of marriage, but a greater risk of divorce in the long run. However, a report published by the Council on Contemporary Families that same year found that couples who cohabited before marriage were less likely to divorce than couples who did not. University of Chicago sociologist Linda that “16 percent of cohabiting women reported that arguments with their partners became physical during the past year, while only 5 percent of married women had similar experiences.”
Most cohabiting couples have a faithful relationship, but Waite’s surveys also demonstrated that 20% of cohabiting women reported having secondary sex partners, compared to only 4% of married women. According to an article by Judith Treas and Deirdre Giesen, cohabiting couples are twice as likely to experience infidelity within the relationship than married couples. Regarding cohabitation as a fertility factor, a large survey in the United States came to the result that married women had an average of 1.9 children, compared to 1.3 among those cohabiting.
The corresponding numbers for men were 1.7 and 1.1, respectively. The difference of 0.6 children for both sexes was expected to decrease to between 0.2 and 0.3 over the lifetime when correcting for the confounder that married people have their children earlier in life. A study of the United States and multiple countries in Europe came to the result that women who continue to cohabit after birth have significantly lower probability of having a second child than married women in all countries except those in Eastern Europe.
Another study, on the contrary, came to the result that cohabiting couples in France have equal fertility as married ones. Also, Russians have a higher fertility within cohabitation, while Romanians rather tend to have childless marriages. Survey data from 2003 in Romania came to the result that marriage equalized the total fertility rate among both highly educated and low educated people to approximately 1.4. Among those cohabiting, on the other hand, lower level of education increased fertility rate to 1.7, and a higher level of education decreased it to 0.7.
On the other hand, another study came to the result that Romanian women with little education have about equal fertility in marital and cohabiting partnerships. In the United States, married couples that submit a combined tax return may face a marriage penalty, where tax credits for low-income single earners are not applied to the combined income.
In October 1998, Senate GOP leader Trent Lott decided to pull a bill to abolish “the marriage penalty, which in the tax code reflects the fact that married couples who both work for wages frequently pay more in taxes than if they earned the same amount of income but weren’t married. And the more equal the incomes of the couple, the steeper the marriage tax penalty.”
The earned income tax credit (EITC) is cash welfare for low-income workers, but the problem is the EITC is not for married couples because they have to combine their wages, which again leads to “the marriage penalty”. If couples do not get married then their wages do not have to combine and the EITC in a way is “paying for” low-income couples not to marry. Opponents of cohabitation believe that some cohabiting couples choose not to marry because they would suffer a tax penalty.
Despite the perceived disincentive to marry that the EITC provides, cohabiting couples suffer many financial losses as their unions are not recognized with the same legal and financial benefits as those who are legally married. These financial penalties can include the costs of separate insurance policies and the costs of setting up legal protections similar to those that are automatically granted by the state upon marriage.
A conflicting study, published by the National Center for Health Statistics, with a sample of 12,571 people, concludes that “those who live together after making plans to marry or getting engaged have about the same chances of divorcing as couples who never cohabited before marriage”. Additionally, William Doherty, a professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota has remarked that in his research he has found that “committed cohabiting relationships seem to confer many of the benefits of marriage”.
A 2003 study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that “The differences in measured outcomes for those from direct and indirect marriages appear to be entirely attributable to other factors.”The study concluded that the evidence suggests that premarital cohabitation has “little impact one way or the other” on the chances of any subsequent marriage surviving.
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