Is Cohabitation Or Not?

In this essay, “The Cohabitation Epidemic,” by Neil Clark Warren, is talking about why many people decide to live their lives in cohabitation instead of getting married right away. Older generations would look at cohabiting as being something bad or even immoral. In this century, this epidemic is something common and, notwithstanding, normal. Over the years, the U.S. Census Bureau has kept up with how this lifestyle has evolved. In 1970, they had 1 million people that were “unmarried-partner households,” and that number rose to 3.2 million in 1990. In the year 2000, they had 11 million people living in those situations.

Many couples find themselves cohabiting today because it is cheaper and more convenient while others take it as a step forward in their committed relationships. Regardless of reason cohabiting has become a union of choice. In recent years cohabitation has transformed from an act of deviance to a norm in many societies. We will be focusing on how time and social change determines cohabitation and divorce.

Over the past few decades, cohabitation has become more recent for couples and families. Cohabitation is when a couple who is not married is living under the same roof as if they are married. It does not refer to roommates or family members who live together, at least two people have to be in a romantic union for it to count as cohabitation. Cohabiting can be for a variety of different reasons. In the 1990s, around 2.5 million people were cohabiting but as of 2015 about 8.3 million people were cohabiting. (Cherlin 2004) Pamela Smock (2000) argues that cohabitation has increased tremendously over the past but it is short lived by couples either breaking the relationship off or proceeding to get married.

Interview questions emphasized cohabitation and the links between cohabitation and marriage. The final sample consisted of 6,881 married couples and 682 cohabiting couples; of these, 5,648 spouses and 519 cohabiting partners completed questionnaires (Vol. 22, Issue 2).

According to Dalton Conley, cohabitation is the “living together in an intimate relationship without formal, legal, or religious sanctioning”(Conley 458). From this, one can assume that cohabitation happens primarily between two people that are in a relationship. When looking at cohabitation within the United States, it has become more evident that it is slowly increasing in popularity. During the early ages, cohabitation was considered very scandalous and was frowned upon, but as the years progress, more and more couples start living together. Whether it is to experience the lifestyle they would have living together as if they were married or living together in order to save money, more and more people are living with their significant other.

I am against the idea of couples cohabitating before marriage, but with a reasonable understanding about the effects it has long term on relationships. Cohabitating before marriage is not something inherently new for many people but it has a lot of problems. I find it to be too intrusive early on, without any real sense of guidelines moving the relationship along into any true sense of stability. The basis for a quality relationship in my opinion is building long-term trust, having personal freedom for self-exploration and understanding, and having the ability to love someone without the forcing yourself into more commitments too soon. Cohabitating is not something that I think should be taken into consideration for the faint of heart.

On Wednesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott enacted legislation, amending "Section 1, Section 798.02," Florida Statutes, repealing a 148-year-old law prohibiting cohabitation. The law prohibited a man and a woman to “lewdly and lasciviously associate” and live together before marriage, according to the Florida statute and is a second-degree misdemeanor. Violators could spend up to sixty days behind bars and be required to pay a $500 penalty. Data from the 2014 census revealed, amongst 7.3 million Florida households, the are nearly 440,000 unmarried, cohabitant unions.

Some believe that the media is the enemy of all people. Millions are exposed to media on a daily basis and because we are so gullible and susceptible, we believe everything we see. This can be very problematic because serious events can be looked over by popular headlines such as, “Kim Kardashian has a secret pregnancy!”. However, not all articles are fake. An article about a recent salmonella outbreak, the further findings on sugar and cancer correlation, and an update on Wendy Williams prove that there are real news in the world. There are ways to determine if what you’re reading is real or fake: current date, cited sources and headline presentation.

In order to gain perspective on this topic I used three couple that I’m very familiar with. They are: my wife and I, whom have been married for 32 years, my son and his girlfriend (cohabitants for 3 years), and my mother and her “boyfriend” (cohabitants for 7 years). When asked about advantages of cohabitating, both my son and my mom’s friend opened with a cliché that begins with the words “why buy the cow”. I will not be using this cliché.

Despite the steady increase in cohabitation across the last several decades, research on its impact on marital outcome is mixed. Some research has suggested that people who cohabitate long-term and do not plan to marry have lower relationship quality and less stable relationships. However, other research has indicated that these couples do not have lower quality relationships (Jose, O'Leary, & Moyer, 2010, p. 105).

Firstly, it is important to explain what is cohabitation and address the myth about “common law marriage”. Cohabitation refers to people who are living together as a couple but they are neither married nor in a civil partnership. According to the Office for National Statistics, cohabitation is the ‘fastest growing family type’ in the UK. In 1996 there were 2.9 million people

Bruce Wydick argued that, “cohabitation may be narrowly defined as an intimate sexual union between two unmarried partners who share the same living quarter for a sustained period of time’’ (2). In other words, people who want to experience what being in a relationship truly is, tend to live under one roof and be more familiar with one-another. Couples are on the right path to set a committed relationship where the discussion about marriage is considered as the next step. However, many people doubt the fact as to live or not together with their future

Studies conducted through the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s showed that cohabitation has a strong correlation with divorce. Recent studies, however, have pointed to possible different results. Cohabitation is on the rise, and many people are okay with it.

Cohabitation is defined as a man and woman living in the same household and having sexual relations while not being married. There is relatively little data on health outcomes for people who have cohabitated, although there is some evidence that cohabitating couples have lower incomes (15% of cohabitating men are jobless while 8% of married men are jobless) and there may be negative academic effects for children of cohabitating mothers (Jay, 2012). Cohabitation rates are highest among those who have never married with just over a quarter of people surveyed reporting cohabitation before their first marriage (Jay, 2012). Of these, half reported that they expected their cohabitation to end in marriage; about one quarter to one third of cohabitations end either in marriage or dissolution of the relationship within 3 years (Jay, 2012). Further, cohabitation rates are highest for those who have not completed college, accounting for all but 12% of men and women reporting that they are living with their partners (Jay, 2012). Cohabitation and marriage are two significant decisions college students will make, but very little is known about what college students think about living together before marriage. Given the nearly 50% divorce rate in the United States (Jay, 2012), understanding how young adults view cohabitation as on option for life relationships needs further investigation.

Although marriage has been a central factor and gives meaning to human lives, the change in people’s lifestyles and behaviors through a long period of social development has resulted in alternate choices such as being single or nonmarital living. As a result, cohabitation has become more popular as a trendy life choice for young people. The majority of couples choose cohabitation as a precursor to marriage to gain a better understanding of each other. However, there are exceptions, such as where Thornton, Azinn, and Xie have noted: “In fact, the couple may simply slide or drift from single into the sharing of living quarters with little explicit discussion or decision-making. This sliding into cohabitation without