Cohabitation
Cohabitation is an arrangement where people who are not legally married live together as a couple. They are often involved in a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. Such arrangements have become increasingly common in Western countries since the late 20th century, led by changing social views, especially regarding marriage. The term dates from the mid 16th century, being used with this meaning as early as 1530.
Social changes leading to increase
Cohabitation is a common pattern among people in the Western world.In Europe, the Scandinavian countries began this trend, although many countries have since followed. Mediterranean Europe has traditionally been very conservative, with religion playing a strong role. Until the mid-1990s, cohabitation levels remained low in this region, but have since increased; for example, in Portugal the majority of children have been born of unwed parents since 2015, constituting 60% of the total in 2021.
In the United States, over the past few decades there has been an increase in unmarried couples cohabiting. Historically, Western countries have been influenced by Christian doctrine on sex, which opposes unmarried cohabitation. As social norms have changed, such beliefs have become less widely held and some Christian denominations view cohabitation as a precursor to marriage. Pope Francis has performed the marriages of cohabiting couples who had children, while former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the archbishop of York John Sentamu have expressed tolerance of cohabitation.
In recent decades, high rates of participation of women in the workforce and the widespread availability of highly effective long acting reversible contraceptives has led to women making individual choices over their reproduction with decreased reliance on male partners for financial stability. All these changes favored alternative living arrangements to marriage.
In Central and Eastern Europe, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were major political changes, such as the fall of Communist governments. These societies entered a new era of increased social freedom, less rigid rules, and less authoritarian governments. They interacted with Western Europe and some became members of the European Union. As a result, the patterns of family life started to change: marriage rates have declined, and marriage was postponed to a later age. Cohabitation and births to unmarried mothers increased, and in some countries the increase was quick.
The deinstitutionalization of marriage refers to the weakening of the social and legal norms that regulate peoples' behavior in regard to marriage. The rise in cohabitation is part of other major social changes such as higher divorce rate, older age at first marriage and childbearing, and more births outside marriage. Factors such as secularization, increased participation of women in the labor force, changes in the meaning of marriage, risk reduction, individualism, and changing views on sexuality have been cited as contributing to these social changes. There has also been a change in modern sexual ethics, with a focus on consent, rather than marital status, reflecting new concepts on the role and purpose of sexual interaction, and new conceptualizations of female sexuality and of self-determination. There have been objections against the legal and social regulation of female sexuality; with such regulations being often seen as violations of women's rights. In addition, some individuals may feel that marriage is unnecessary or outdated, leading to couples not formalizing their relation. For instance, in the European Values Study of 2008, the percentage of respondents who agreed with the assertion that "Marriage is an outdated institution" was 37.5% in Luxembourg, 35.4% in France, 34.3% in Belgium, 31.2% in Spain, 30.5% in Austria, 29.2% in Germany, 27.7% in Switzerland, 27.2% in Bulgaria, 27.0% in the Netherlands, 25.0% in Slovenia.
The fact that many couples choose to live together without formalizing their relation is also recognized by the European Union. A 2004 directive forbids EU members from denying entry or residence of partners "with whom the Union citizen has a durable relationship, duly attested."
Reasons for cohabitation in the United States
Cohabitation in the United States is often a part of the dating process. In fact, "cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first coresidential union formed among young adults".By 1996, more than two-thirds of married couples in the US said that they lived together before getting married. "In 1994, there were 3.7 million cohabiting couples in the United States." This is a major increase from a few decades earlier. According to Dr. Galena Rhoades, "Before 1970, living together outside marriage was uncommon, but by the late 1990s at least 50% to 60% of couples lived together premaritally."
People may live together for a number of reasons. Cohabitants could live together to save money, or because of the convenience of living with another, or a need to find housing.
Lower income individuals facing financial uncertainty may delay or avoid marriage, not only because of the cost of a wedding but also because of fear of financial hardship if a marriage were to end in divorce.
When responding to a survey of the reasons for cohabitation, most couples listed reasons such as spending more time together, convenience-based reasons, and testing their relationships, while few gave the reason that they do not believe in marriage. The extremely high costs of housing and tight budgets of the economy are also factors that can lead a couple to cohabitation.
Sixty percent of all marriages are preceded by a period of cohabitation. Researchers suggest that couples live together as a way of trying out marriage to test compatibility with their partners, while still having the option of ending the relationship without legal implications. In 1996, "More than three-quarters of all cohabitors report plans to marry their partners, which implies that most of them viewed cohabitation as a prelude to marriage." Cohabitation shares many qualities with marriage. Often couples who are cohabiting share a residence, personal resources, exclude intimate relations with others, and more than 10% of cohabiting couples have children. "Many young adults believe cohabitation is a good way to test their relationships prior to marriage." Couples who have plans to marry before moving in together or who are engaged before cohabiting typically marry within two years of living together. The state of cohabitation of a couple often ends either in marriage or in break-up; according to a 1996 study about 10% of cohabiting unions remained in this state more than five years. According to a survey done by The National Center for Health Statistics, "over half of marriages from 1990 to 1994 among women began as cohabitation."
Cohabitation can be an alternative to marriage in situations where marriage is not possible for legal or religious reasons.
Cohabitation, sometimes called de facto marriage, is becoming a more common substitute for conventional marriage. Common-law marriage in the United States can still be contracted in nine US states, and in two others under restriction. This helps provide the surviving partner a legal basis for inheriting the decedent's belongings in the event of the death of their cohabiting partner. In modern cohabiting relationships, forty percent of households include children, giving an idea of how cohabitation could be considered a new normative type of family dynamic. In 2012, 41% of all births in the US were to unmarried women. In three states births outside marriage were in the majority; the lowest percentage of births outside marriage was in Utah, at 19%. During the period 2006–2010, 58% of births outside marriage were to cohabiting parents.
Contemporary objections to cohabitation
Contemporary objections to cohabiting couples include religious opposition to non-marital unions, social pressure for couples to get married, and potential effects of cohabitation on a child's development.The rise in the number of cohabiting couples and children born out of wedlock in the Western world has made cohabitation a strong focus of sociological research. The rise in cohabiting couples in the United States, from around 450,000 in 1960 to 7.5 million in 2011 has been accompanied by US research performed on child development within cohabiting households. Opponents of cohabitation say non-marital parenting is an unsuitable environment for a child's development. One study from 2002 correlated lower numeracy skills and higher delinquency to children of cohabiting couples; however, recent studies that control for factors including poverty, the educational level of parents and violence in the home show children of cohabiting couples are developmentally similar to peers of comparable married couples.
Effect on children
In 2001, researchers compared teenage children in the United States living in a cohabiting household against peers in single-parent households. The results showed white and Hispanic teenagers had lower performance in school, greater risk of suspension or expulsion than peers from single-parent households, and the same rate of behavioral and emotional problems.A study on the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth found increases in both the prevalence and duration of unmarried cohabitation. The study found that 40% of children in the United States would live in a cohabiting household by age 12, and children born to single mothers were more likely than those born to married mothers to live in a cohabiting household. The percentage of women ages 19–44 who had ever cohabited increased from 45% in 1995 to 54% in 2002.
In 2002, 63% of women who graduate from high school were found to spend some time cohabiting, compared to only 45% of women with a four-year college degree. Cohabiting couples who have children often get married. One study found that children born of parents who cohabit are 90% more likely to end up living in households with married parents than children born to single mothers. 67% of unmarried Hispanic mothers are expected to marry, while 40% of African American mothers are expected to marry.