Posted on 03/01/2006 7:09:06 AM PST by ZGuy
In the United States, living together instead of marrying has become the norm for couples -- half of young adults aged 20-40 are cohabiting instead of getting married. Cohabitation has increased nearly 1,000% since 1980, and the marriage rate has dropped more than 40% since 1960.
Some see substituting living together for marriage as an insignificant shift in family “structure.” Those who are better informed realize that the shift has disastrous ramifications for the individuals involved, as well as for society and public policy.
The faulty reasoning leading young adults to make such a poor choice must be exposed. Here are four myths surrounding the shift.
Myth No. 1: Living Together Is a Good Way to “Test the Water”
Many couples say that they want to live together to see if they are compatible, not realizing that cohabitation is more a preparation for divorce than a way to strengthen the likelihood of a successful marriage -- the divorce rates of women who cohabit are nearly 80% higher than those who do not. In fact, studies indicate that cohabiting couples have lower marital quality and increased risk of divorce. Further, cohabiting relationships tend to be fragile and relatively short in duration; less than half of cohabiting relationships last five or more years. Typically, they last about 18 months.
Myth No. 2: Couples Don’t Really Need That “Piece of Paper”
A major problem with cohabitation is that it is a tentative arrangement that lacks stability; no one can depend upon the relationship -- not the partners, not the children, not the community, nor the society. Such relationships contribute little to those inside and certainly little to those outside the arrangement. Sometimes couples choose to live together as a substitute for marriage, indicating that, in case the relationship goes sour, they can avoid the trouble, expense and emotional trauma of a divorce. With such a weak bond between the two parties, there is little likelihood that they will work through their problems or that they will maintain the relationship under pressure.
Myth No. 3: Cohabiting Relationships Usually Lead to Marriage
During the 1970s, about 60% of cohabiting couples married each other within three years, but this proportion has since declined to less than 40%. While women today still tend to expect that “cohabitation will lead to marriage,” numerous studies of college students have found that men typically cohabit simply because it is “convenient.” In fact, there is general agreement among scholars that living together before marriage puts women at a distinct disadvantage in terms of “power.” A college professor described a survey that he conducted over a period of years in his marriage classes. He asked guys who were living with a girl, point blank, “Are you going to marry the girl that you’re living with?” The overwhelming response, he reports, was “NO!” When he asked the girls if they were going to marry the guy they were living with, their response was, “Oh, yes; we love each other and we are learning how to be together.”
Myth No. 4: Cohabiting Relationships Are More Egalitarian Than Marriage
It is common knowledge that women and children suffer more poverty after a cohabiting relationship breaks up, but it’s not so well understood that there is typically an economic imbalance in favor of the man within such relationships, too. While couples who live together say that they plan to share expenses equally, more often than not the women support the men. Studies show that women typically contribute more than 70% of the income in a cohabiting relationship. Likewise, the women tend to do more of the cleaning, cooking and laundry. If they are students, as is often the case, and facing economic or time constraints that require a reduction in class load, it is almost invariably the woman, not the man, who drops a class.
So What’s the Conclusion?
A mass of sociological evidence shows that cohabitation is an inferior alternative to the married, intact, two-parent, husband-and-wife family. Increasingly, the myths of living together without marriage are like a mirror shattered by the force of the facts that expose the reality of cohabitation.
Dr. Crouse is senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute.
We do.
In my opinion, the whole "holding off on kissing/touching" thing should end at engagement or whenever the couple has decided that yes, they are going to get married. Kissing before that decision could cloud the decision. Not kissing afterwards is just weird.
And I wouldn't make an hard and fast rule either way... some people would find holding hands to be going to far before engagement, others see nothing wrong with making out. I'm not here to judge any of them.
Living together without marriage is not a good situation for women. You give up everything; your freedom, privacy etc, and you get nothing.
I know of many older women who lived with a man and were not married. Their SO died and they were left with absolutely nothing after 10 or 20 years.
See my post above. You give up everything and get nothing.
(1)...transfer of authority from the father to the husband when a woman leaves her father's house
Heh.. I understand the ideas in the marriage vows and all that, but this idea of "authority" transfer, sounds pretty bizarre to this chick. I think if some suitor approached my dad about 'taking authority' over me, my dad would have wished him lotsaluck and sent him along, after he stopped laughing his head off. "Authority" isn't even in the vocabulary of the marriage I'm in.
(2)NO physical contact even kissing. (3)Almost no time alone.
While I can respect in principle those who wait to be very intimate... It wasn't a big barrier for me. What I would fear more about the courtship result is that you really don't learn what the person is like when they don't realize they're being evaluated. I think it sets up people spending time only on their best behavior, we're ALL on our best behavior in the beginnings of relationships, and not being alone together ever, or spending enough time alone for the pretenses to come down a little, would mean you really don't know the person... only how they act in public.
BUT... having started my own 'courtship' in the same way Jen did... online, I'll say it's a lot more intimate for the kinds of conversations that are important, than people give credit for. I might propose that those who court online in writing probably converse more and converse deeper than many couples who meet in person. So the act of courting online does make up and become part of that necessary "alone time".
Also - too many rules... that part isn't for me either. Part of it is age and part is personality. But I offer my thoughts on the subject, grist for the mill ;~D.
We are just not going to agree on that. If that were the case, my judgment would have been clouded in sixth grade, when one of my Catholic school classmates, a boy, had a boy/girl party where I first played spin the bottle. I attended several of those kinds of parties, well chaperoned of course, several times thereafter.
This notion that you see in some circles that's just neato keen to date women young enough to be your children.
It doesn't sit well with me either... It's a subject I've talked a lot about with John O.
Creepy/scary is in the eye of the creeped out and scared. I wish I could tell you differently, but yes Virginia, this does creep me out. That's just a statement of fact.
You say that as though it's a fact, when it's not. I personally doubt that it would have happened anyway. In either event I KNOW that neither of us can prove it one or the other.
Yeah, it's called a common-law marriage and in certain states, women can demand alimony if you live with them for a while and then break up.
Agreed. See #3 in the post you quoted.
Though noble in it's intent, the courtship model seems geared to eliminating the pain in finding a mate, particularly for women. Though, the pain can be minimized, for most of us, unless our first boyfriend or girl friend is THE one (I do know people for which that was true), to eliminate the pain entirely or even as much as the courtship model intends, is just not possible.
Which parts are creepy to you? We would probably find the same things creepy... I've known of people who court in a way I'd find pretty darn creepy.
Of course a number of my friends were creeped out that I wasn't planning to move in with my fiance until after I get married so creepy goes both ways apparently.
Nor I.
I want to wish you luck or at least wish you well, but I can't wish that on a woman. I know we disagree, but I'm a firm believer that May-December relationships are absolute hell on the younger party once the aged member of the relationship truly gets old.
I'm 42, and I could easily keep up with a woman of 22. However, when I'm 72 and she's 52, her life would just suck to high heaven. She'd still be young and vital, and stuck to a guy playing connect the liverspots in the mirror.
Yes, it does.
It is stealing their youth.
A woman I used to ride home with on the train from work was in a relationship like that. Her husband was really beginning to age and slow down (he was 20 years her senior), and she confessed to me that she was no longer attracted to him.
IMHO, and this isn't a hard and fast rule or anything, just an opinion, but 10 years is about the absolute limit for a healthy relationship.
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