28 S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4
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In some parts of the world, such as LatinAmerica, cohabitation is a widespread andancient tradition, but in the U.S. and other
Western countries, it barely existed threedecades ago. In America today, for every 100married couples, there are 10 unmarried cou-ples living together. But this statistic under-states the prevalence of the practice, as a thirdof all married women younger than 45 havecohabited at some point in their lives.
Although an increasing number of olderAmericans do so, cohabitation takes place
mostly among those 40 or younger and is gen-erally short-lived, with two thirds of unionslasting two years or less. Those who cohabittend to have less income and education, areless religious, and are more likely than non-cohabitants to come from broken homes. Liv-ing together, more so for whites than blacks,is usually a prelude to marriage, althoughabout one out of four cohabiting women donot see their unions as a first step to marriagebut simply as an alternative to being single ordating. Some cohabitants live with parents,relatives or housemates. Cohabitation tendsto be most prevalent in New England, Flori-da and the West and least prevalent in theSouth, the most conservatively religious re-gion in the U.S.
Little evidence supports the popular no-tion that cohabitation is good training formarriage. Indeed, some research shows thatthose who cohabit are more likely to suffermarital discord and divorce. Other research,however, suggests that cohabitation as such isnot to blame; rather it is the behavior of co-habitants, some of whom are prone to vio-lence and excessive drinking. Compared withthose in married-couple families, children incohabiting families tend be poorer, are not aswell fed and are not read to as frequently; theyalso have more behavioral problems. Chil-dren living with married parents fare better,although their advantage over children livingwith cohabiting parents may reflect race, eth-nicity and their parents’ education. The num-ber of cohabiting couples with children isgrowing rapidly, and as things stand now, onein four children can expect to live in a cohab-iting family sometime during childhood.
According to one theory, cohabitationthrives because women, with their growing fi-nancial independence, no longer feel the ur-gency of finding a husband to support thembut nonetheless want to enjoy the benefits ofa live-in partner. There is little evidence, how-ever, that affluent women find marriage lessdesirable. Another possible explanation is thatwomen, particularly young women, may bemore inclined to cohabit because of a grow-ing disenchantment with marriage, which theyoften see as a situation in which the wife takeson most of the domestic work. Still anotherexplanation is that the need for an arrange-ment short of marriage was always there butremained unfulfilled until the 1970s, whenfeminism, oral contraception, more individ-ualistic attitudes and social activism com-bined to loosen the bonds of convention.
The rise in cohabitation has only partial-ly made up for the decline in marriage. Fewerthan 60 percent of those who cohabit havenever married, and thus the increase in thenever-marrieds in the past three decades re-sults only in part from rising cohabitation.
Rodger Doyle can be reached [email protected]
Living TogetherIN THE U.S., COHABITATION IS HERE TO STAY BY RODGER DOYLE
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Family Status PercentNever married 58Divorced, separated 37Widowed 4Children 43No children 57
Age PercentUnder 20 220–29 3630–39 2940–54 2555–64 565+ 3
Race PercentWhite (non-Hispanic) 70Black 13Hispanic 14Asian and Pacific Islanders 2Native Americans 1
CHARACTERISTICS OF COHABITANTS
Changes in Family Structureand Child Well-Being: Evidencefrom the 2002 National Survey
of America’s Families. Gregory Acs and Sandi Nelson.
Urban Institute, 2003.www.urban.org
Unions 2003. The National Marriage Project.
http://marriage.rutgers.edu
Center for Family and DemographicResearch. See papers by
Wendy Manning, Susan Brown andPamela Smock. www.bgsu.edu/
organizations/cfdr/main.html
FURTHERREADING
S O U R C E : U . S . C e n s u s . D a t a o n c o h a b i t a n t s f r o m P h i l i p N . C o h e n , U n i v e r s i t y o f C a l i f o r n i a , I r v i n e .
COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
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