Census Numbers Show Cohabitation Becoming the Norm
by AFA Journal
September 13, 2005
(AgapePress) - Cohabitation is becoming more common and losing its stigma in today's society. USA Today recently reported that "more than two-thirds of married couples in the U.S. now say they lived together before marriage. And the number of unmarried opposite-sex households overall is rising dramatically ...."According to the U.S. Census, from 1996 to 2000 there was a tenfold increase in unmarried couples living together -- meaning about 10 million people, or 8 percent of U.S. coupled households, are living with a partner of the opposite sex.
"In some sense, cohabitation is replacing dating," said Pamela Smock, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.
High housing costs and tight budgets are often motives for cohabitation. However, Marshall Miller, co-founder of the Alternatives to Marriage Project -- a national nonprofit that advocates for the rights of the unmarried -- believes that couples should not cohabit just because their leases are up.
"If one sees it as a way to save on rent and the other sees this as an engagement of sorts, then you're going to be headed for trouble," Miller explained.
Scott Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, said, "People who are cohabiting might end up marrying somebody they might not otherwise have married." In other words, they're "sliding not deciding."
"People want what marriage signifies: that sense of 'us with a future,' " Stanley added. "But because of the high rates of divorce for the past few decades and many other circumstances, including decreased rates of marriage, there is really a crisis in confidence about the institution of marriage."
This crisis is reflected in the more recent decline of divorces in the United States -- not because married couples are staying together but because they are never getting married in the first place, according to an annual report released by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. It found that both the marriage and divorce rates are on a steady decline in the U.S.
"Cohabitation is here to stay," said David Popenoe, a Rutgers sociology professor and report co-author. "As society shifts from marriage to cohabitation -- which is what's happening -- you have an increase in family instability."
This article appeared in the September 2005 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
