Sunday, October 24, 2010
Moving in together before marriage used to be associated with a higher risk for divorce. But now, as more unmarried couples than ever before decide to live under the same roof, do they face the same fate?
Sociologists think the calculus may have changed. Part of the difference stems from just who’s deciding to shack up. In the late ’70s, only about a third of people lived together before tying the knot. Those people tended to be less traditional in their beliefs—it was the age of the hippie, after all—and therefore more likely to get divorced, says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. As cohabiting has come more common across the country, however, the once strong link between “living in sin” and divorce has weakened over time. While some religious groups, such as socially conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, still frown upon living together before marriage, two thirds of marriages in the U.S. now start as cohabitations. “Something that used to be stigmatized is now becoming the common experience,” Smock says.
Another difference is why couples decide to live together. The ’70s-era domestic partners might have been motivated by free love. But as you might expect in an era of high unemployment and rising poverty rates, it’s often money, not romance, that prompts today’s couples to share an address. “What really stood out was the change in unemployment characteristics,” says Rose Kreider, a family demographer for the U.S. Census who analyzed recent data on the topic. In 2008, 59 percent of cohabiting couples said both partners were employed. That number fell to 49 percent in 2010. Kreider says the survey specifically asked people if they were living with a boyfriend or girlfriend.
As it turns out, money is likely to play a major role in a couple’s prospects for the future, too. Many of the cohabitations that started for economic reasons during the Great Recession are “fragile” and probably won’t result in marriage, says Wendy Manning, associate director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University. That’s because the lower your income, the less likely you are to move from cohabitation to marriage, research has shown. (Of course, walking down the aisle isn’t a goal for everyone) According to Manning’s and Smock’s research, even if couples with less money do end up getting married after cohabiting, they’re still more likely to get divorced.
In tough economic times, financial stress can often trump love. During the Great Depression, when cohabiting was taboo, both marriage and divorce rates dropped. “These trends had little to do with marital happiness,” says Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins and the author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. “People kind of stay put during an economic downturn.” Today, the divorce rate is at the lowest point since the early 1970s. Even with more Americans moving in together, the long-term decline in marriage also accelerated during the recession, according to the Census Bureau. Although the age at which people first marry is at a historic high (28 for men and 26 for women), most American couples still strive for marriage after they move in together, except during an economic downturn, Cherlin says. In other places across the world—such as the Scandinavian countries, in particular—cohabiting relationships have become a substitute for marriage. But for most Americans, “cohabitation is an acceptable but temporary arrangement,” Cherlin says. “Many cohabiting couples may now be in limbo, unable to marry and afraid to break up.”
Read the full story here.