The Family - Cohabitation: All Part Of The New Dating Scene?

Living in sin is what cohabitation was once routinely called. That time was not so long ago. The last 30 years of the 20th century saw a dramatic rise in the number of couples living together out of wedlock and a growing acceptance of this practice by society at large. This represents a striking change from earlier times. The trend is very clear. We are choosing to cohabit instead of, or in anticipation of, marrying at a rate 12 times higher in 2000 than we did in 1960. Fully 5% of all households are now made up of an unmarried couple living together.

Because cohabitation has only slowly gained acceptance over the period presented on the chart, it is only recently that data are being gathered on the phenomenon in a systematic manner. Only since 1995 has the Census Bureau begun to collect such data consistently. "Unmarried partner" appeared for the first time on the 2000 Census of the U.S. as a relationship category. Once the detailed figures from this census are available, we will have far better statistical data with which to work in gaining an understanding of who exactly cohabits. The data available to date suggests that cohabitation is a very generalized practice.

University of Michigan sociologist Pamela J. Smock, who has studied and written on this subject extensively, offers the following observations. First, and rather predictably, those who choose cohabitation tend to have a "slightly lower" socioeconomic status, be "slightly less" religious, have "slightly more" liberal views and support non-traditional gender and family roles.

What is more interesting is the fact that, according to Dr. Smock, only about 17% of cohabiting couples live together, unmarried, for more than three years. Cohabitation seems to be a short-term arrangement and in more than half the cases it is a prelude to marriage.

An estimated 55% of cohabiting couples will marry their partner within three years. In fact, between the years 1990 and 1994 56% of all marriages were preceded by a period of cohabitation. This suggests that for at least half of those living together, cohabitation can be seen as an intimate extension of old dating patterns. Some argue that the children of divorced parents are particularly concerned with avoiding divorce themselves. They believe that by living together they can more accurately gauge their compatibility with a prospective mate and thus be more "sure" before entering marriage. Sadly, as a widely quoted study found, couples that cohabit prior to marriage actually have a higher risk of divorce than those who do not.

Another aspect of cohabitation that is generating great interest is that a large number of cohabiting couple households include children. The U.S. Census Bureau data for 1998 show a decline in the percentage of cohabiting couples living with children under the age of 15 since 1960. Of course, in 1960, 44.9% of cohabiting households was only 197,000. In 1998, although the percentage of unmarried couples living together with children is down, the number of households involved has risen substantially to 1,520,000.

One final point should be made about cohabiting couples and children. Dr. Smock has written, "a large share of children born to supposedly 'single' mothers today are born into two-parent households. Moreover, the widely cited increase in recent years in nonmarital childbearing is largely due to cohabitation, and not to births to women living without partners." Here is an area of great interest to anyone studying the steady rise in single-mother households.

Clearly, cohabitation patterns have changed the look of the American family landscape in the last 30 years. Statistical data collection has not kept pace, but as it catches up we will be better able to understand the present and future significance of this practice on our living arrangements and patterns of family formation.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Unmarried-Couple Households, by Presence of Children, 1960 to Present. Online. Available: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ms-la/tabad-2.txt. January 7, 1999 (for chart data ); Census 2000 Supplementary Survey Profile. Table 1. Online. Available: http://www.cen-sus.gov/c2ss/www/Profiles/2000/Tabular/010/01000US1.htm. (for 2000 data). Eric Nagourney. "Study Finds Families Bypassing Marriage." New York Times on the Web, 15 February 2000, http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/212/family_trends/familytrends.htm. (for information about Dr. Pamela Smock's research).