cohabitation - de facto relationships - common but still risky?

Living Together Before Marriage: Now Common But Still Risky

Even though more than half of couples now do it, compared with only 10 percent 30 years ago, living together before marriage in a cohabitation - de facto relationship still is linked to higher rates of troubled unions, divorce and separation, Penn State researchers have found.

The Penn State team compared data on 1425 people married between 1964 and 1980 when a cohabitation - de facto relationship was less common and between 1981 and 1997 when a cohabitation - de facto relationship was more common. They found that, in both groups, couples in a cohabitation - de facto relationship reported less happiness and more marital conflict than couples not living in a cohabitation - de facto relationship.

Also, in both groups, couples who lived together before marriage in a a cohabitation - de facto relationship were more likely to divorce.

"It had been consistently shown in the past that, contrary to the popular belief that living together in a a cohabitation - de facto relationship will improve a person's ability to choose a marriage partner and stay married, the opposite is actually the case."

The study, "The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Marital Quality and Stability: Change Across Cohorts?," was published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family.

Although all the reasons why a cohabitation - de facto relationship and troubled unions are related remains unknown, the researchers report that their data and a review of the literature suggest that both personal characteristics and the experience of a cohabitation - de facto relationship play important roles.

The Penn State team notes that research indicates that people choose riskier partners when living in a cohabitation - de facto relationship, because they think that a cohabitation - de facto relationship will be easier to break up than marriage. However, once a couple is living together, the fact that they share possessions, pets, and children and have invested time in their relationship may propel them to marry.

Research has also shown that living together in a cohabitation - de facto relationship can make people less religious and may encourage them to develop problematic relationship skills and to spend less time resolving problems or providing support to their partners.

They write, "A weak commitment to lifelong marriage and less attention to communication skills during a cohabitation - de facto relationship may carry over into marriage and make couples more vulnerable to the inevitable challenges that couples face over time."

• "Living together before marriage increases the risk of breaking up after marriage" - but the study actually concluded that for first-time cohabitors who then marry their partners, there's no increased risk of divorce. Maybe a higher divorce risk makes one more likely to cohabit.
• "Cohabiting couples report ... lower levels of happiness" - Rich people are happier than other people. Married people are more likely to be rich. Isn't it likely that the increased "happiness" we hear so much about is actually because people are wealthy, not because they're married? Pro-marriage-only groups like to talk about how much happier married people are, implying that cohabitors are unhappy. In reality, the difference between the two is quite minimal, with both groups saying they are quite happy.
• "Cohabiting unions tend to weaken the institution of marriage"
• "Some research has shown that aggression is at least twice as common among cohabitors as it is among married partners"
• "One of the greatest problems for children living with a cohabiting couple is the high risk that the couple will break up"
• "[Many children living with cohabiting couples are from a previous relationship of one of the parents.] This means that they [the children] are living with an unmarried stepfather or mother's boyfriend.... These children have no claim to child support should the couple separate"
• "By all of the empirical evidence at our disposal, not to mention the wisdom of the ages, the institution of marriage remains a cornerstone of a successful society"
• Married couples are better connected than cohabitors "to the larger community. This includes other individuals and groups (such as in-laws)"
  
  This study found that 76% of cohabitors plan to get married to their partner (another study the cohabitation report cites, Brown and Bumpass, found that 80% of young adults plan to marry their partner). It also found that among cohabitors who plan to marry, there is no difference in terms of relationship quality when compared to married people.