Cohabitation and Trends

Cohabitation and Trends

Introduction

We will be reviewing the article (Stanley et al, 2006) and will understand the underlying constructs in cohabitation and lack of commitment to marriage. We have been presented with the fact that more women between the ages of eighteen to twenty four become mothers before marriage then married women, while they still think that marrying will be “nice” then cohabitation but they do prefer to go for the later due to find the right guy to settle with. It is also stated that women are asking if they will be happy after marriage or they are better off in cohabitation. We will be constructing our hypotheses and will use the provided article (Stanley et al, 2006) to find answers to our questions.

Discussion

We would like to construct the following hypotheses on the given topic.

Hypotheses 1

More women between the ages of eighteen and twenty four prefer cohabitation and building a serious relationship before marriage.

Hypothesis 2

Women do consider the marriage to be nice but prefer cohabitation to as they think they have more to lose after marriage.

Hypothesis 3

Women are less likely to get married before cohabitation since 1976.

Hypothesis 4

Women will have a fuller, happier life as a married person then cohabitation prior to marriage.

The Reason for Negative Trends

The chief reason for hypotheses are the weakening of family values and distance from religion. Study shows that people who are religious or people who are traditional, they are less inclined to indulge in cohabitation before marriage (Lillard et al., 1995; Stanley et al., 2004; Thornton et al.,1992; Lye and Waldron,1997). Another reason is the number of divorces as many young couples considers cohabitation as a trail or test to check their relationships (Johnson et al. 2002; Thornton and Young-DeMarco, 2001). In a survey at University of Michigan, the ...