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.
Exactly right. I so agree. It's something I didn't see that way (as above) until recent years, though I always advocated dating five years either way from my own age.
While I most prefer a five year difference, ten years is the absolute limit (I recently had the same thought as a result of these threads), you are so correct.
And companionship in their own old age. Maybe they'll get lucky and marry again after finishing the raising of the kids, alone... I realize we can all be widowed by accident or disease any time.... and I say that with full sympathy for anyone, especially John, who's lost a spouse. And May-December marriages can be good. I have a good friend of mine who married a man much older than herself, but they met by accident and decided to marry despite the age difference, they didn't seek it out. At 45, she's still happy, but he's inevitably failing... a little senility he'll argue about and deny, hard of hearing... He's becoming old. It's an unavoidably selfish thing to seek to marry someone you you can fully expect to leave alone for the last 15-20 years of their life.
Agreed.
Good point.
Besides, who would want to be married to someone who doesn't know who Jack Wild was (or HR Pufnstuf, for that matter)?
My wife and I are 4 years apart, and even that gets in the way sometimes. She was disco, I was new wave. She was "The 70's", I was post-aids epidemic.
But 4 years is still something that can be overcome.
Most agreed. It's selfish to steal their youth as well.
My husband is 5 years younger than me...
I wonder if he remembers HR Pufnstuf :~D I haven't asked :~D
My wife is always going on about 'The Banana Splits'. To this day I have no idea what she's talking about :)
We're both over 55. I'm a widower, she's divorced. There are no minor children to worry about, we're both set financially and it's nobodies business but ours.
Bill is the guy we had fun with back in our Wild Child days, but if we were smart we never took him seriously.
I also think the saying from a few elections ago is true, that George Bush (pere) did not poll well with women because he reminded too many of them of their first husband. :)
A group of coworkers I was in several years ago had one much younger member of the group. The same sort of remark was made in an article I had read; an older man who used to date much younger was explaining why he had gone back to women his own age - "You get tired of waking up in the morning next to someone who never heard of Adlai Stevenson."
Everyone laughed at this except the much younger woman, who looked blank. I said, "Adlai Stevenson!"
She got testy and replied, "All RIGHT. Who WAS she?"
*Shrug* I tried three days. It didn't work either...
Yet the Hildabeast married him...
I've known LOTS of marital combinations among people I know that I couldn't begin to understand. Haven't you? :)
~funny~ :~D
Xena's Guy married me after seven years of living together.
Heck, I've even been in one!
Or as Xena's Guy says, "Why would I go out for milk when I have a cow at home?"
Because you like strawberry milk?
Or even chocolate?
One doesn't fall in love with an age, one falls in love with a human being with a soul.
Age is only important if you make it an issue.
My 94 year old neighbor passed away this year. She was a medical doctor and a painter. She left behind her husband of 27 years who is 62. He is a professor of music and a church organist. They were a happy devoted couple who had a beautiful life together.
BTW She lost her first husband when she was forty three...he was only 45 and he died,
Death and loss can occur at any age.
True love is eternal and does not fade with age.
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