Abstract

Because more couples than ever before cohabit instead of or before marriage, researchers have studied differences between married and cohabiting couples. This comparison is far harder to make than one might think. For example, married couples tend to have been together much longer than cohabiting couples. On the one hand, because most couples tend to experience a decline in happiness over time, comparisons between long-time married couples and cohabiting couples would be biased in favor of showing cohabiting couples to be, on average, happier. On the other hand, couples who make it through many years of marriage are a special group, having survived many difficult and challenging times together. Therefore, samples of long-time married couples tend to include many very happy couples. This is just one example of how difficult it is to properly compare cohabiting versus married couples. Nevertheless, after carefully accounting for the complex nature of this comparison, researchers have found several important differences between cohabiting and married couples.

Marriage Vs cohabitation

Introduction

The trends in romantic relationships have been changing dramatically over the past few decades in the United States. Divorce rates increased steadily over the past 40 years and are finally leveling off at just less than 50%; marriage rates have similarly declined, with the average age of first marriage increasing; and the number of cohabiting couples has increased sharply. Census data from 2000 indicated that 5.5 million households (4.9 million different-sex couples and 0.6 million same-sex couples) identify themselves as unmarried relationship partners living together, representing more than 5% of all households in the United States. Although this arrangement may seem to represent a small proportion of households in the United States, the number of cohabiting couples has increased 1,000% since 1960 (while the general population increased by around 60%). More than 40% of women have lived with a romantic partner without marriage at some point in their lives, and the majority of married couples today lived together before marriage (Brown, 37).

Marriage

A man and woman are said to be married when they enter into a relationship that is understood by the couple and by their community to be more or less permanent. All known human societies recognize and promote the state of marriage; in the past, virtually all human beings who reached adulthood got married, and this is also true of most people today. From the perspective of society, marriage is the best way to ensure the smooth functioning of the larger community.

For most of the history of the human species, the vital pursuits of life have taken place in the context of the kin group. The domestic, economic, political, social, and spiritual well-being of the individual have all traditionally depended upon the participation of relatives. Kin continue to be important in contemporary nonindustrial societies. All societies recognize the pivotal role of the family as the bedrock of human activities. As a result, customs surrounding marriage are patterned in a way that tends to protect the integrity of the marital bond.

Cohabitation

Cohabitation refers to partners in a romantic relationship ...