Cohabitation in the U.S.
...6). The duration of the cohabitation has been negatively linked to the quality of the relationship, according to Susan Brown. Cohabiters who marry within a few years of living together are least likely to experience the negative effects of the transition, but couples who live together for very long periods of time before deciding to marry experience the most marital difficulty. Brown says it is these couples who have the highest levels of instability and especially low levels of relationship interaction and happiness. Seventy-five percent of cohabitating couples say they plan to marry, and it has been found that after marriage, rates of violence for the majority of couples drop and women report increased happiness in the relationship (8). Yet, numerous studies continue to show negative results for cohabitating couples who marry. A study of 1,425 couples in the United States showed that married couples who lived together first exemplify higher rates of marital instability and unhappiness over those who did not live together beforehand (2). A study of 92 couples married 2 years or less showed that couples who live together before marriage developed more negative problem solving approaches and had poor communication skills (6). Michael Frank, like most studies on this topic, concurs. His study found a greater hazard of dissolution even after counting time spent in cohabitation as part of marital duration. He attributes this to non-traditional lifestyles of cohabitates, leaving them more prone to having higher expectations for marriage, adapt less readily to conventional marital role expectations, lean towards a more deviant lifestyle and generally have lower commitments to the idea of marriage (9). Woods and Emery attempt to clarify such findings by reiterating that it is not the act of cohabitating itself that leads to problems, but the individual characteristics of those who are more likely to live together before marriage. This is called the “self-selection explanation.” “Cohabitation accounted for little variance in divorce rates after controlling for the cultural factors of ethnicity and religion and the personal attribute of delinquency.” (8). Hence, it may very well be that the types of people willing to cohabitate are exactly the types of people less likely to have successful marriages. Non-religious people may be less committed to the sanctity and sacrament of marriage; certain ethnicities are less likely to have marital success do to cultural norms and values that have been changing over time, and people more likely to engage in risky or delinquent behaviors are also less likely to be able to keep any marriage together, despite cohabitation. Values, education, age, parental marital history, and the presence of premarital children are all indicators of the “self-selection explanation. Gregg Herman agrees with such findings, citing that living together before marriage confuses people as to whether they are “married” or “single,” since cohabitation combines factors of both positions (10). The conflicting ideas between those two roles is enough to lead to discord in any relationship. Another difference may lie in cohabitates themselves. Cleary finds that two separate subgroups exist...those who see marriage as a lifetime commitment and those who view it in simply pragmatic terms. Therefore, those who value marriage will be more likely to end up and stay married, while those who value a relationship for the immediate return will be “weeded out” either during the cohabitation period, or during marriage itself (5). Alvare concludes a few pertinent facts. First, the vast assumption that cohabitation leads to higher divorce rates sprung from 1970’s data. These collections were more likely to be affected by the self-selection explanation, since marriage was such an established standard at the time. This makes deviations from that standard bound to have specific and often individual reasons for choosing this alternative lifestyle, and these reasons often were incompatible with the ideals of a successful marriage (1). Alvare also points out that when the ‘union duration’ is considered, that is from the very start of cohabitation through marriage, divorce rates between directly married and cohabitating couples are indistinguishable. It is imperative that more quality and current research on this subject be carried out. During a time when marriage is on the decl...