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Sunday, April 28, 2013


Cohabitation 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together in an intimate relationship, particularly an emotionally and/or sexually intimate one, on a long-term or permanent basis.

  • More broadly, the term cohabitation can mean any number of people living together.

Reasons for cohabitation

Today, cohabitation is a common pattern among people in the Western world. More than two-thirds of married couples in the US say that they lived together before getting married.[1] "In 1994, there were 3.7 million cohabiting couples in the United States."[2] This is a far cry from a few decades ago. Before 1970, cohabitation was illegal in the United States.[3] According to Dr. Galena Rhoades, "Before 1970, living together outside of marriage was uncommon, but by the late 1990s at least 50% to 60% of couples lived together premaritally.[4] According to the U.S. Census, "the number of unmarried couples living together increased tenfold from 1960 to 2000." Nowadays, it is seen as a normal step in the dating process.[5] In fact, "cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first coresidential union formed among young adults." [6] People may live together for a number of reasons. Cohabitants could live together in order to save money, because of the convenience of living with another, or a need to find housing.[5] Lower income individuals facing financial uncertainty may delay or avoid marriage, not only because of the difficulty of paying for a wedding[7] but also because of fear of financial hardship if a marriage were to end in divorce.[8] When given a survey of the reasons why they cohabitate 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.[9] The extremely high costs of housing and tight budgets of today's economy are also factors that can lead a couple to cohabitation.[1] Today sixty percent of all marriages are preceded by a period of cohabitation.[10] 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. "More than three-quarters of all cohabitators report plans to marry their partners, which implies that most of them view cohabitation as a prelude to marriage.[11] Cohabitation shares many qualities with marriage, often couples who are cohabitating share a residence, personal resources, exclude intimate relations with others and, in more than 10% of cohabitating couples, have children.[12] "Many young adults believe cohabitation is a good way to test their relationships prior to marriage.[13] Couples who have plans to marry before moving in together or who are engaged before cohabiting typically marry within two years of living together.[14] "About 10% of cohabiting unions last more than five years." [15] According to a survey done by The National Center for Health Statistics, "over half of marriages from 1990-1994 among women began as cohabitation.[6]

Cohabitation can be an alternative to marriage in situations where marriage is not able to happen for financial or other reasons, such as same-sex, some interracial or interreligious marriages.[14] Other reasons might include cohabitation as a way for polygamists or polyamorists to avoid breaking the law, a way to avoid the higher income taxes paid by some two-income married couples (in the United States), negative effects on pension payments (among older people), or seeing no need to marry.

Cohabitation, sometimes called de facto marriage, is becoming more commonly known as a substitute for conventional marriage.[16] In some states which recognize it, cohabitation can be viewed legally as common-law marriages, either after the duration of a specified period, or if the couple consider and behave accordingly as husband and wife.[17] (This helps provide the surviving partner a legal basis for inheriting the deceased's belongings in the event of the death of their cohabiting partner). In today's cohabiting relationships, forty percent of households include children, giving us an idea of how cohabitation could be considered a new normative type of family dynamic.[10]

Contemporary objections to cohabitation before marriage

There has been a documented increase in the number of cohabiting couples in the last fifty years. In 1960, there were approximately 450,000 couples cohabiting in the United States; by 2011, the number had increased to 7.5million.[18] Because of the dramatic increase in the number of cohabiting couples, there are fewer objections to this kind of relationship than there were in the 1960s. Contemporary objections to cohabiting couples center around three primary topics; religion, social pressure, and the effect of cohabitation on a child's development.

Religious reasons are a primary factor cited by people for the opposition of cohabitation. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have stances of opposition to cohabitation.[19][20][21] These religious groups agree that cohabitation before marriage is a violation of their moral beliefs on the sanctity of a sexual relationship between a man and a women outside of marriage. "Pre-marital, extra-marital and same-sex relationships are all forbidden in Islam."[22] While most members of these groups don't adhere to the strict nature of their religious organization's belief on cohabitation, the pressure from other members of the group or religious authorities lead to a drop in cohabitation. Pope John Paul II felt that, "de facto free unions, i.e., those unions without any publicly recognized institutional bond, are an increasing concern."[23] As for the Jewish perspective, "For example, normative Judaism forcefully rejects the claim that never marrying is an equally valid lifestyle to marriage. Judaism states that a life without marrying is a less holy, less complete, and a less Jewish life." [21]

Religion can also lead to societal pressures against cohabitation especially within large Evangelical Christian communities.[24] "Researchers have posited many ideas about why cohabitation has increased in the United States and how the beliefs or opinions of others might affect one's decision to cohabit. Some have noted that a decline in religious authority and changes in religious structures have accompanied the rise in cohabitation." [25] In addition to Religious pressures, there are familial pressures that prevent cohabitation. Young adults that grew up in families that oppose cohabitation have lower rates than their peers.[26]

Finally, there has been an increase in the research performed on the relationship between cohabitation and its effect on child development.[27] People have opposed cohabitation because they believed that it led to an unstable environment for a child's development. Some Studies have shown a decrease in math skills and an increase in delinquency among children of cohabiting couples.[28] However, when other environmental influences like poverty, low education of the parent, and violence in the home are controlled; children of cohabiting couples are developmentally similar to their peers of married couples.[29]

Effects on marriage and family life

Likelihood of split

Conflicting studies on the effect of cohabitation on subsequent marriage have been published. In countries where the majority of people disapprove of unmarried individuals living together, or a minority of the population cohabits before marriage then marriages resulting from cohabitation are more prone to divorce. But in a study on European countries, those where around half of the population cohabits before marriage, cohabitation is not selective of divorce-prone individuals, and no difference in couples that have cohabited before and after marriage is observed.[30][31] In countries such as Italy, the increased risk of marital disruption for people who experienced premarital cohabitation can be entirely attributed to the selection of the most divorce-prone into cohabitation.[32]

In 2002 the CDC found that for married couples the percentage of the relationship ending after 5 years is 20%, for unmarried cohabitators the percentage is 49%. After 10 years the percentage for the relationship to end is 33% for married couples and 62% for unmarried cohabitators. [33] [34]

A 2004 study of 136 couples (272 individuals) from researchers at the University of Denver found differences among couples that cohabited before engagement, after engagement, or not until marriage. The longitudinal study collected survey data collected before marriage and 10 months into marriage, with findings suggesting those who cohabit before engagement are at greater risk for poor marital outcomes than those who cohabit only after engagement or at marriage.[35] A follow-up survey by the researches of over 1,000 married men and women married in the past 10 years found those who moved in with a lover before engagement or marriage reported significantly lower quality marriages and a greater possibility of a separation than other couples. [36] About 20 percent of those who cohabited before getting engaged had since suggested splitting - compared with only 12 percent of those who only moved in together after getting engaged and 10 percent who did not cohabit prior to marriage.[37]

The researchers from Denver suggest that relationships with pre-engagement cohabitation "may wind up sliding into marriage",[37] whereas those that only cohabit post engagement or marriage make a more clear decision. This could explain their 2006 study of 197 heterosexual couples finding that men who cohabited with their spouse before engagement were less dedicated than men who cohabited only after engagement or not at all before marriage.[38] In some heterosexual couples, women are more likely to understand cohabitation as an intermediary step preceding marriage, and men more likely to perceive it without an explicit connection to marriage. [39][40] [41]

An analysis of data from the CDC's National Survey of Family Growth data from 1988, 1995, and 2002 suggests that the positive relationship between premarital cohabitation and marital instability has weakened for more recent birth and marriage cohorts, as the total number of couples cohabitating before marriage has increased.[42]

Later CDC work found that between 2002 and 2006-2010, the number of couples in opposite-sex cohabiting relationships increased from 9.0% to 11.2% for women, and from 9.2% to 12.2% for men.[43] Drawing on the 2006-2008 data, Princeton university researchers examined whether and to what extent variation in premarital cohabitation experiences influence marital stability. They found that the relationship between cohabitation and marital instability is complex and depends in part on marriage cohort, race/ethnicity, and marriage plans. Their analyses reveal that a 'cohabitation effect' exists only for women married prior to 1996, and that, until marriage plans are considered, there is no cohabitation effect among women married since 1996. [44]

Recent research from 2011 by the Pew Research Center has found that the number of couples that cohabit before marriage has increased. 44% of adults (and more than half of 30- to 49-year-olds) say they have cohabited at some point. Nearly two-thirds of adults who ever cohabited (64%) say they thought about it as a step toward marriage. The report also notes a trend toward rising public acceptance of cohabiting couples over the years. Most Americans now say the rise in unmarried couples living together either makes no difference to society (46%) or is good for society (9%). [45]

Effect on children

The parenting role of cohabiting partners could have a negative effect on the child. The partner that is not the parent, usually the father, does not have "explicit legal, financial, supervisory or custodial rights or responsibilities regarding the children of his partner" says Waite.[46] This can cause an unstable living arrangement for the child and can cause the child to act out in a certain way because the mother or father's partner is "not their real parent."[citation needed]

In 2001, research was done on the effects of living in a cohabiting household versus a single-parent household on teenagers. The results showed that White teenagers fare worse living in a cohabiting household than living in a single parent household. They tend to do worse in school, are more likely to get suspended or expelled, and have just as many behavioral and emotional problems as those living with a single-parent. The impact for Hispanic teens is just as dramatic and the impact for Black teens is less noticeable.[47]

More often than not, children most often experience cohabitation through their mother's form of a new relationship; whether of not the children are born to a single or married mother. A late 1990s study stated that children are expected to be a part of a cohabitating family by the age of twelve. Those children who were born from single mothers had a higher chance of cohabitating by the age of twelve compared to those children whose mothers were married by about 63%. For those children whose mothers were married, their expectancy to enter into a cohabitating household was about 15% by the age of twelve. Oftentimes in a cohabitating relationship, adults will produce children of their own. For those children being brought into this new household, around thirty-nine percent of babies will be born within the formation of a cohabitating relationship by the time these children are twelve. The expectancy of children being in a cohabitating family by the time they are twelve was 37% in 1990-1994 and grew to 46% in 1997-2001. with this rapid growing rate, it is expected that in the United States, half of the children will be living with a cohabitating mother, and most by or before the age of twelve.[48]

When children are born in a cohabitation situation, marriage is often one of the next steps. These children are 90% more likely to enter into a marriage as opposed to children that were born to single mothers. The likelihood that an unmarried single mother will get married has actually been proven to increase and vary depending on the mothers education level. Children of mothers who attended a four year college are 74% more likely to find that their mothers may wed as opposed to the high school drop out mothers, where their children only have a 40% expectancy for them to marry. There is also a difference in ethnicity for children in cohabiting households who expect the relationship to move towards a marriage. Hispanics are 67% likely to see their mothers getting married, whereas African American children only have a 40% expectancy. Overall, children who were born to younger mothers are more likely to see their mothers marry at some point as opposed to older mothers. Children who are born to younger mothers are also more likely to experience maternal cohabitation. It is thought that this is due to the limiting available market as you age, and often older women, ages 25 and up, were married at some point before their cohabitation. Either scenario children experience a disruption in family dynamic.[48]

Abuse and infidelity

University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite [46] found that "16 percent of cohabiting women reported that arguments with their partners became physical during the past year, while only 5 percent of married women had similar experiences." Most cohabiting couples have a faithful relationship, but Waite's surveys also demonstrated that 20 percent of cohabiting women reported having secondary sex partners, compared to only 4 percent of married women. A 1992 study found that male members of heterosexual couples with children are less likely to be a part of the childcare but half the time they are responsible for child abuse.[49]

According to an article by Judith Treas and Deirdre Giesen, cohabiting couples are twice as likely to experience infidelity within the relationship than married couples.[50]

Financial effects

In the United States, married couples that submit a combined tax return may face a marriage penalty, where tax credits for low-income single earners are not applied to the combined income. In October 1998, Senate GOP leader Trent Lott decided pull a bill to abolish "the marriage penalty," "which in the tax code reflects the fact that married couples who both work for wages frequently pay more in taxes than if they earned the same amount of income but weren't married. And the more equal the incomes of the couple, the steeper the marriage tax penalty." [51] The Earned income tax credit (EITC) is a wage supplement for low-income workers, but the problem is the EITC is not for married couples because they have to combine their wages, which again leads to "the marriage penalty." If couples do not get married then their wages do not have to combine and the EITC in a way is "paying for" low-income couples not to marry. Opponents of cohabitation believe that some cohabiting couples choose not to marry because they would suffer a tax penalty.[51]

Despite the perceived disincentive to marry that the EITC provides, cohabiting couples suffer many financial losses as their unions are not recognized with the same legal and financial benefits as those who are legally married. These financial penalties can include the costs of separate insurance policies and the costs of setting up legal protections similar to those that are automatically granted by the state upon marriage.[52]

No effect

A conflicting study, published by the National Center for Health Statistics, with a sample of 12,571 people, concludes that "those who live together after making plans to marry or getting engaged have about the same chances of divorcing as couples who never cohabited before marriage."[53]

Additionally, William Doherty, a professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota has remarked that in his research he has found that "committed cohabiting relationships seem to confer many of the benefits of marriage."[54]

A 2003 study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that "The differences in measured outcomes for those from direct and indirect marriages appear to be entirely attributable to other factors." [55] The study concluded that the evidence suggests that premarital cohabitation has "little impact one way or the other" on the chances of any subsequent marriage surviving.

Cohabitation by region

Americas

United States

Cohabitation in the United States became common in the late 20th century. As of 2005[update], 4.85 million unmarried couples were living together, and as of 2002[update], about half of all women aged 15 to 44 had lived unmarried with a partner. In 2001, seven states still had anti-cohabitation laws on the books, but they are almost never enforced and are now believed to be unconstitutional since the legal decision Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.[56] However, the anti-cohabitation laws have indirect effect. For example, one consequence of the anti-cohabition laws in these 7 states is that one cannot claim their boyfriend/girlfriend as a dependent (for a tax exemption), whereas in the other states it is legal to do so after meeting 4 criteria: residency, income, support and status.[57]

In the US, in 2007, it is estimated that 16.4 million households were maintained by two opposite sex persons who said they were unmarried. [58]

  • "Cohabitation was almost impossible in the United States prior to the 1960s. Laws prevented unmarried couples from registering in hotels and it was very difficult for an unmarried couple to obtain a home mortgage. From 1960 to 1998, cohabitation moved from disreputable and difficult to normal and convenient." PBS: Social disruptions

According to the 2009 American Community Survey conducted by the Census Bureau, the proportion of 30-to-44-year-olds living together has almost doubled since 1999, from 4% to 7%. Fifty-eight percent of women aged 19 to 44 had ever cohabited in data collected in 2006-08, while in 1987 only 33% had. Cohabitation is more prevalent among those with less education. "Among women ages 19 to 44, 73% of those without a high school education have ever cohabited, compared with about half of women with some college (52%) or a college degree (47%)," note the Pew study's authors, Richard Fry and D'Vera Cohn.[59]

Latin America

  • Cohabitation in Latin America is very common, especially for young people. This region has the highest rates of non-marital childbearing in the world (55–74% of all children in this region are born to unmarried parents).[60] In Mexico, 18.7% of all couples were cohabiting as of 2005[update]. Among young people, the figures are much higher.[61]

Asia

  • In Nepal, living together is socially acceptable only after marriage.[62] However, cohabitation is an emerging trend in urban areas of Nepal. Reports have shown that there may be significant number of unmarried couples cohabiting in cities, especially in the capital, Kathmandu. Even when the unmarried couples cohabit they either prefer to remain anonymous or pose themselves as married couple.[63]. Cohabitation is not recognised by the law of Nepal and there is no special provision to secure the right of coabitants in Nepalese law.
  • In Bangladesh cohabitation after divorce is frequently punished by the salishi system of informal courts, especially in rural areas.[64]
  • Cohabitation in India had been taboo since British rule. However, this is no longer true in large cities, but is not often found in rural areas which are more conservative. Live-in relationships are legal in India. Recent Indian court rulings have ascribed some rights to long-term cohabiting partners. Female live-in partners have economic rights under Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 subject to following conditions as laid by Honourable Supreme Court of India in case of D. Velusamy v D. Patchaiammal:

(a) The couple must hold themselves out to society as being akin to spouses. (b) They must be of legal age to marry. (c) They must be otherwise qualified to enter into a legal marriage, including being unmarried. (d) They must have voluntarily cohabited and held themselves out to the world as being akin to spouses for a significant period of time.

  • In Indonesia, an Islamic penal code proposed in 2005 would have made cohabitation punishable by up to two years in prison.[65] The practice is still frowned upon, and many hotels and boarding houses have been raided by police for allowed unmarried couples to share a room.
  • In Japan, according to M. Iwasawa at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, less than 3% of females between 25-29 are currently cohabiting, but more than 1 in 5 have had some experience of an unmarried partnership, including cohabitation. A more recent Iwasawa study has shown that there has been a recent emergence of non-marital cohabitation. Couples born in the 1950s cohort showed an incidence of cohabitation of 11.8%, where the 1960s and 1970s cohorts showed cohabitation rates of 30%, and 53.9% respectively. The split between urban and rural residence for people who had cohabited is indicates 68.8% were urban and 31.2% were rural.[66]
  • In the Philippines, around 2.4 million Filipinos were cohabiting as of 2004[update]. The 2000 census placed the percentage of cohabiting couples at 19%. The majority of individuals are between the ages of 20-24. Poverty was often the main factor in decision to cohabit.[67]

Europe


  • While couples of all ages cohabit, the phenomenon is much more common among younger people. In late 2005, 21% of families in Finland consisted of cohabitating couples (all age groups). Of couples with children, 18% were cohabitating.[69] Of ages 18 and above in 2003, 13.4% were cohabitating.[70] Generally, cohabitation amongst Finns is most common for people under 30. Legal obstacles for cohabitation were removed in 1926 in a reform of the Criminal Code, while the phenomenon was socially accepted much later on. In France, 17.5% of couples were cohabiting as of 1999.[61]

Britain today and in history

In Britain today, nearly half of babies are born to people who are not married (in the United Kingdom 47.3% in 2011[71]; in Scotland in 2012 the proportion was 51.3%[72]) The Victorian era of the late 19th century is famous for the Victorian standards of personal morality. Historians generally agree that the middle classes held high personal moral standards and rejected cohabitation. They have debated whether the working classes followed suit. Moralists in the late 19th century such as Henry Mayhew decried high levels of cohabitation without marriage and illegitimate births in London slums. However new research using computerized matching of data files shows that the rates of cohabitation were quite low—under 5% -- for the working class and the urban poor.[73]

Middle East

  • The cohabitation rate in Asian countries is much lower than in Europe or Latin America. In some parts of the continent it is however becoming more common for young people. As of 1994, the rate of premarital cohabitation in Israel was 25%.[74]
  • Cohabitation is illegal according to sharia law (for the countries that enforce it)[75][76]

Aside from the law, cohabiting remains very much taboo across the region. Nevertheless, the issue of cohabitation of unmarried couples has featured in some Tunisian movies, such as Les Silences du Palais (1994)

Oceania

  • In Australia, 22% of couples were cohabiting as of 2005[update]. 78% of couples who marry have lived together beforehand in 2008,[77] rising from 16% in 1975.[78]


Hungary

The literature on second demographic transition argues as well that highly educated women are more prone to engage in cohabitation, although the reasons are different: they are less concerned with respecting the societal norms.[79] Some scholars argued that cohabitation is very similar to being single in the sense of not giving up independence and personal autonomy.[80]

In Hungary, cohabitation was an uncommon phenomenon until the late 1980s and it was largely confined to the divorced or widowed individuals.[81] Among the ethnic groups, Gypsy/Rroma tended to have higher rates of cohabitation, mainly due to their reluctance to register their marriages officially.[82] Since the 1980s, cohabitation became much more frequent among all ethnic groups and it has been argued to have strongly influenced the decline in fertility.[83]

The entire wiki link can be found at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohabitation
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