Cohabitation Update - 8/29/07

[Smartmarriages]

- COHABITATION UPDATE FROM USA TODAY
- LIVING TOGETHER ISN'T JUST 'PLAYING HOUSE'
- CENSUS REVEALS MORE COUPLES
- POLL: COHABITATION NOW VIEWED AS HEALTHY

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- LIVING TOGETHER ISN'T JUST 'PLAYING HOUSE'
Living together isn't just 'playing house'
As numbers grow, research no longer paints cohabitation with the negative
stereotypes of past
By Sharon Jayson
USA TODAY
July 29, 2008 

A generation ago, unmarried couples who lived together were often derided
for "shacking up" or "playing house." Studies in the 1980s supported those
negative stereotypes, suggesting that cohabitation could doom a long-term
relationship, substantially raising the risk of divorce.

While researchers say the overall divorce rate is higher among those who
lived together before marriage, now they don't blame cohabitating.

"There's been a sea change in societal, cultural and individual acceptance
of cohabitation," says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the Population Studies
Center at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. "A lot of the earlier
studies were relying on data that may have been gathered in the late '80s
and mid-'90s. We're talking about a moving target. The evidence is a lot
more mixed."

Researchers say changing times have produced more extensive information
about cohabiters and more sophisticated research methods.

Census data out today show 9.6% of all opposite-sex couples living together
in 2007 were unmarried. "Cohabitation has become a common experience in
people's lives," Smock says.

"The nature of cohabitation has changed," says Jay Teachman, a sociology
professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham. "Cohabitators 20
years ago were the rule breakers, the rebels, the risk takers ‹ the folks
who were perhaps not as interested in marriage, and using cohabitation as an
alternative to marriage."

"Twenty or 25 years ago, if you were cohabiting and then married them, the
marriage was more likely to dissolve and end in divorce," he says. "Today,
that's not the case. You can cohabit with your spouse and not experience
increased risk of divorce. We're making these finer distinctions that we
didn't make before."

Teachman's analysis of federal data on 6,577 women whose first marriages
occurred between 1970 and 1995 found that a woman who has lived only with
her future spouse has no greater risk of divorce. But for women who lived
with someone else in addition to the eventual husband, there is a greater
risk of divorce, found the study, published in 2003.

Those aren't the only studies reflecting changes ‹ researchers across the
country, including at the University of Wisconsin, the University of
Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University, Cornell University and others, are
studying cohabiting couples. Among other recent findings:

€The odds of divorce among women who married their only cohabiting partner
were 28% lower than among women who never cohabited before marriage,
according to sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University in Ithaca,
N.Y.

€Divorce rates for those who cohabit more than once are more than twice as
high as for women who cohabited only with their eventual husbands, says
Lichter's study, to be published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in
December.

€Cohabiting between a first and second marriage doesn't raise the risk of
divorce ‹ unless the woman brings a child into the marriage from a previous
relationship. A man with a child from a previous relationship does not raise
the likelihood of a second divorce, finds a study in the May Journal of
Marriage and Family, in which Teachman analyzed findings on 655 women from
the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

Other recent studies have shown that certain subgroups don't appear to
experience negative effects from cohabiting, such as engaged couples who
move in together or those who have already decided to marry in the future.

Some new research goes further, suggesting that living together may reduce
risk of divorce.

"We showed women who only cohabited with their husband had lower rates of
divorce than women who didn't cohabit and went straight to marriage,"
Lichter says. "There seems to be less risk than if you cohabit many times or
if you don't cohabit at all." An academic paper on that lower divorce risk
for cohabiters is forthcoming, he says.

His research on serial cohabitation analyzed data from the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth and found that women living with even one more
man in a romantic relationship other than the eventual spouse increased
divorce risk.

Sociologist Kelly Musick, also from Cornell, says the focus on cohabitation
research is shifting.

"The emphasis in the cohabitation literature for a very long time was on
trying to understand why couples who cohabit before marriage split up at
higher rates than those who don't," she says. "More recent studies have
tried to understand more about what it means and look at it more as a family
form in its own right."

------------------------
- CENSUS REVEALS MORE COUPLES
Direct question bumps up data
By Sharon Jayson
USA TODAY
July 29, 2008 

The number of opposite-sex couples who live together has jumped from less
than 1 million 30 years ago to 6.4 million in 2007, show federal data
released Monday. Cohabiting couples now make up almost 10% of all
opposite-sex U.S. couples, married and unmarried.

That's up from 2006, when Census reported 5 million unmarried, opposite-sex
households. But that was based on a question some respondents might have
found unclear. In a 2007 supplemental survey of 100,000 households, Census
asked more directly if respondents had "a boyfriend/girlfriend or partner in
the household" and found 1.1 million more couples.

"We're not saying that suddenly since last year there's another million
couples" living together, says Rose Kreider, a Census family demographer.

The 2007 data show that in 48.5% of cohabiting couples, neither partner had
ever been married; in 28% both had been married previously. Of cohabiting
women, 46.8% were under 30, vs. 39.6% of men.

----------------------
- POLL: COHABITATION NOW VIEWED AS HEALTHY

Poll: Cohabitation is healthy
Sharon Jayson
USA TODAY
July 29, 2008

Most people today reject the notion that couples who live together before
marriage are more likely to get divorced, finds a weekend USA TODAY/Gallup
Poll of 1,007 adults.

Almost half (49%) said living together makes divorce less likely; 13% said
it makes no difference. Just 31% said living together first makes divorce
more likely; 7% had no opinion.

"If you're living with someone, you actually get to know somebody more than
you would not living with them," says Christopher Sekulich, 37, of
Melvindale, Mich.

Similarly, most respondents don't worry about the effect on children of
living in a cohabiting household: 47% said it makes no difference, and 12%
said it would have a positive effect.

Respondents also appeared open-minded on whether unmarried couples can have
a committed relationship. Half the sample was asked if an unmarried couple
who have lived together for five years is as committed as a couple married
five years; 57% said yes, they are.

Times are changing, people noted.

Rickie Lockhart, 56, of Sacramento was married at 18 and didn't live with
her ex-husband first.

"You didn't do things like that back then. You got married," she says.
"That's what everybody expected."

Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the Population Studies Center at the
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, says the new data still miss the extent of
cohabitation today. "It's not telling how many people have ever cohabited,
which is much more than that."

Sociologist Linda Waite of the University of Chicago says compared with
Scandinavian countries, where it's more likely to be a long-term committed
relationship, living together in the USA isn't very stable or long-term.

"It's something people do that leads to somewhere," she says. "If it doesn't
lead to marriage, it leads to splitsville."


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