Individual's Perspective an Perception of The Cohabitation and Family Life

Cohabitation

Over the last few decades, there have been many dramatic changes to the values and beliefs that Americans hold about traditional family structures. People are becoming more accepting of nontraditional families, creating many different family forms that have not been seen before the postmodern family era. One of the most important changes in family life over the last fifty years has been cohabitation, which is when two nonmarried persons are living together in a sexual relationship. Being in a cohabiting relationship has become very popular, whether the two people have plans to marry or are just continuing their relationship without any want or need to marry. There has been a lot of research conducted on cohabitation and the effects of living with someone before marriage. Personally, my own beliefs on cohabitation vary a little bit. While I do believe that it is best to wait until marriage before living with someone, I think there are a few cases when cohabitation is okay before marriage. One instance that I believe that cohabitation could work is due to economic reasons. If the two nonmarried persons do not have enough money to get married yet or cannot afford to live separately, I think the cohabitation could still end with good results. This being said, I do not think that cohabitation will work out unless the two people have plans to be married in the near future. I do not think that living with someone before getting married in order to “test” out the relationship is necessary if they know they want to be together. Cohabitation instead of marriage relates to not being 100% committed to the relationship, creating higher divorce rates in the future. Over the last 50 years, there have been many different kinds of research experiments conducted on cohabitation. While some studies focus on the reasons why cohabitation has become popular, others focus on the effects of cohabitation and how that correlates with marriage longevity and quality.

Overall, the research has all revealed the same answer. Researchers are calling this the cohabitation effect, and this is is the reasoning that “those who live together prior to marriage are generally at a great risk for marital breakup and lower marital quality (Schramm 2015)." Cohabitation effect shows that premarital cohabitation is associated with lower marital satisfaction, poorer perceived and observed communication within the marriage, more marital conflict, and a higher rate of infidelity. However, not every marriage that begins with cohabitation will end in divorce. This depends on a lot of factors, and most of the times the people who cohabitate and their experiences during that cohabitation are the moving forces behind the divorce. Another conclusion from research is sliding versus deciding. This is saying that people who cohabitate and then get married instead of breaking up usually slide into the marriage instead of deciding. This is usually due to cohabitation creating inertia, making it harder to end the relationship due to sharing a home or lease, having a pet, and maybe having children together. Sociologist Norval Glenn termed this inertia-related risk “premature entanglement.” Glenn’s central focus was how “premature entanglement shortens a person's search for the best mate they may have otherwise obtained. If the average person thinks they can get around the fact that cohabitation makes it harder to break up, all other things being equal, they may be kidding themselves (Stanley 2014).” In conclusion, all research has shown that cohabitation before marriage usually ends with divorce due to factors such as sliding versus deciding and the inertia theory. Although my views vary slightly from the research, I do overall agree with what the research is saying. The research is able to back up their conclusions with facts, and that within its self is very hard to ignore. Furthermore, the cohabitation effect is very relevant to many marriages today, and I have personally seen marriages break up that began with cohabitation. Looking at the bigger picture, cohabitation does not work because the two people are not necessarily 100% committed to each other even though they share everything that a married couple does, except a last name. This being said, I think that premarital cohabitation can and does work in certain situations. It is impossible to say that every marriage is the same and is predictably going to end in divorce. Cohabitation is just a complex version of a different kind of family structure, and research has shown that couples who are engaged and are cohabiting before their wedding date show no differences of marital stability compared to couples who did not cohabit. Therefore, this proves that commitment is the main issue when it comes a cohabiting relationship, which backs up with the research has already proven.