the role of cohabitation in declining rates of marriage

The Role of Cohabitation in Declining Rates of MarriageAuthor(s): Larry L. Bumpass, James A. Sweet and Andrew CherlinSource: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 913-927Published by: National Council on Family RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/352997 .

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LARRY L. BUMPASS AND JAMES A. SWEET University of Wisconsin-Madison

ANDREW CHERLIN Johns Hopkins University*

The Role of Cohabitation in

Declining Rates of Marriage

Sharp declines in both first marriage rates and rates of remarriage have been largely offset by increasing cohabitation. The increase in the proportion of unmarried young people should not be interpreted as an increase in "singlehood" as tradi- tionally regarded: young people are setting up housekeeping with partners of the opposite sex at almost as early an age as they did before marriage rates declined. The characteristics of cohabiting couples are documented here, including the role of the least educated in leading this trend, and the presence of children with 40% of the couples. While most cohabitors expect to marry their partner, there is a substantial proportion who disagree about marriage, and a high proportion are concerned about the stability of their relationship. Thus the picture that is emerging is that cohabitation is very much afamily status, but one in which levels of certainty about the relationship are lower than in marriage.

It is by now well known that recent cohorts of young adults in the United States and most other Western nations have been postponing marriage relative to the cohorts that entered adulthood in

the period from 1945 to 1965. It is also well known that the number of cohabiting couples has increased greatly since about 1970. It is the con- nection between these two developments that we address in this analysis. In particular, we compare trends in marriage and remarriage to trends in these variables when cohabitation is included, and examine education differences in the rise of cohabitation. We then document the characteristics of cohabiting couples in terms of the duration of the union, presence of children, perceived stability, marriage plans, and opinions about cohabitation. Finally, we analyze several marriage-related attitude items among all unmarried persons under age 35.

Limited data exist for a few other countries on the relationship between union formation and marital formation. In France, for example, a 1985 survey of adults from 18 to 44 years of age collected a history of their unions, including both marriages and periods of living with a partner as a couple (Leridon and Villeneuve-Gokalp, 1989). The results showed a pattern of sharp increases in premarital cohabitation that began, as in the United States, in about 1970. Among all ever- married persons aged 34 or younger in 1985, more than 40% reported a premarital cohabitation, compared to only about 20% among earlier cohorts.

As a consequence of this increased cohabitation in France, the proportion of all young adults who had ever lived in a union, married or non-

Center for Demography and Ecology, 4412 Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory Drive, University of Wiscon- sin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1393.

*Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Balti- more, MD 21218.

Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (November 1991): 913-927 913



914 Journal of Marriage and the Family

married, remained nearly constant. That is to say, the fall in the proportion ever married among young adults was compensated by the increase in the proportion who had ever cohabited. The first experience of living in a union was not occurring at a later age, on average, although the first union increasingly was a nonmarital one. After about 1981 or 1982, however, the situation changed. From that point, the proportion ever married fell more rapidly and was not fully compensated by an increase in cohabitation, so that the proportion experiencing a first union by a given age declined substantially. Similar results have recently been reported for Sweden (Hoem and Rennermalm, 1982), Australia (Bracher and Santow, 1988), and Canada (Rao, 1990).

Until recently there have not been adequate data for an assessment of the relationship between changing marriage and cohabitation in the United States. Fortunately, we are now able to do this with the recently completed National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH).

THE NATIONAL SURVEY OF FAMILIES AND HOUSEHOLDS

The NSFH is a national sample survey of 13,017 respondents, conducted in 1987-88. In addition to a main sample of 9,643 persons aged 19 and over, we oversampled certain population subgroups. The oversample included households containing single-parent families, stepfamilies, recently married couples, cohabiting couples, blacks, Chi- canos, or Puerto Ricans. In each selected household, a randomly selected adult was interviewed. A self-administered form was also filled out by the spouse (or cohabiting partner), and by a householder in cases in which the primary respondent was a relative of the householder (such as an adult child in a parent's household or an elderly parent in a child's household). Interviews aver- aged about one hour and forty minutes in length.

The NSFH was designed to provide detailed information on many aspects of family life in order to permit analyses of relationships among various family domains (see Sweet, Bumpass, and Call, 1988). Because of the importance of cohabitation for understanding the changing meaning of marital unions, we devoted considerable attention to the relationships between cohabitation and marriage, including the following components:

1. Detailed measurement of cohabitation histories in the context of marriage and separation histories.

2. A sequence on attitudes relating to marriage and cohabitation asked of never-married and previously married respondents under age 35.

3. A series of questions concerning the nature and quality of the relationship between partners in both married and cohabiting couples.

4. A self-administered interview with the spouse or partner of the main respondent.

5. A few questions relating to attitudes toward marriage and cohabitation asked of all respondents.

While the present study is only exploratory, it draws on each of these initiatives to provide information on the relationship between cohabitation and marriage in the United States. We begin by examining marriage and cohabitation histories to replicate the type of analysis noted earlier for France and Australia.

MARITAL AND NONMARITAL UNION FORMATION

The Formation of First Unions

In the United States, the proportion of persons who lived with a partner before marrying for the first time increased from 11 % around 1970 (Bum- pass and Sweet, 1989a) to nearly half for recent first marriages (Bumpass, 1990). Figures 1 and 2 illustrate (for males and females, respectively) the effect of cohabitation in offsetting the decline in marriage rates. The oldest of these cohorts, aged 40-44 at interview, reached age 20 during the mid-1960s; the most recent reached age 20 in the mid-1980s. Because of the low levels of cohabitation for the oldest cohorts, there is little difference between the proportions ever married and the proportions ever in a union. For these cohorts, age at marriage was a reasonable indicator of age at first union. This is clearly no longer so. In the absence of cohabitation, there would have been a substantial decline in the proportions setting up housekeeping before ages 20 and 25. However, when first cohabitation is included with first marriage, we find only a very slight decline in age at first union over these cohorts.

Note that, for women, the proportion experiencing a union before age 20 did not decline until the cohorts centered on 1960 reached adulthood- which was in the 1980s. Even then, the decline was



Cohabitation and Declining Rates of Marriage 915

FIGURE 1. PERCENTAGE MARRIED, AND PERCENTAGE IN UNION, BEFORE AGES 20 AND 25: MALES

80-

o 60 C

c

40

LEGEND c

"70 Age 20 Ever Married

20---- ----Age 20 Ever Married or Cohabited

C a) Age 25 Ever Married

Age 25 Ever Married 0

" or Cohabited

1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Birth Cohort

slight, and the proportion experiencing a union before age 25 has yet to decline substantially. These results are similar to the aforementioned findings from France, in which declines in the proportions experiencing a union did not occur until the early 1980s-appearing most in unions before age 25 among men and in unions before age 20 among women.

In order to try to estimate the scale of the ef-

fect of cohabitation in offsetting marriage declines, we have organized the data in Table 1 to compare the proportions married at ages 20 and 25 for the cohorts reaching these ages in 1970 and in 1985. (For example, persons aged 35-39 at survey reached age 20 around 1970, whereas those aged 20-24 at survey reached this age around 1985.) The trends are shown in Table 1 by sex, race, and educational attainment.

FIGURE 2. PERCENTAGE MARRIED, AND PERCENTAGE IN UNION, BEFORE AGES 20 AND 25: FEMALES

100

80 -- - --

14 60O c

a LEGEND

- Age 20 Ever Married

co Age 20 Ever Married 20or Cohabited

c Age 25 Ever Married

CL Age 25 Ever Married s I or Cohabited

1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Birth Cohort




TABLE 1. RELATIVE CHANGE IN THE PROPORTIONS EVER MARRIED AND EVER IN UNION BY AGES 20 AND 25: COHORTS REACHING THESE AGES AROUND 1970 AND 1985

Percentage Percentage 0 Change Married Ever Married Ever in Union -% Change Unioned Category 1970 1985 70 Change 1970 1985 % Change 07 Change Married

Panel A: Before Age 20a Total 27% 14% -49% 29% 23% -20% 59% Males 18 5 -72 21 13 -38 47 Females 35 22 -38 38 33 -11 71 Whites 28 15 -46 30 25 -15 67 Blacks 24 6 -75 28 15 -53 29 Education

0-11 years 43 30 -29 47 49 4 114 12 years 42 17 -60 44 28 -37 38 College 14 5 -62 16 10 -39 37

Panel B: Before Age 25b Total 72% 55% -24% 75% 69% -8% 67% Males 65 43 -34 69 59 -14 59 Females 79 66 -17 82 78 -4 76 Whites 76 58 -23 78 71 -9 61 Blacks 61 37 -40 66 61 -7 83 Education

0-11 years 72 58 -19 78 76 -3 84 12 years 80 62 -23 82 74 -10 57 College 66 48 -27 69 62 -10 63

aCohorts aged 35-39 and 20-24 at survey. bCohorts aged 25-29 and 40-44 at survey.

The first three columns of this table show the well-known sharp decline in percentages married. The upper half of the table concerns marriage before age 20. The proportion who married as teenagers reached a 20th-century high in the 1950s and has declined markedly and steadily since (Cherlin, 1981; Sweet and Bumpass, 1987). Teen- age marriage declined an average of 50% over these cohorts. Among males, blacks, and the college-educated, teenage marriages declined by two- thirds to three-quarters, and have nearly disap- peared.

The sharp swings in marriage timing in the postwar period have been most pronounced in the 20-24 age group, making the estimates in the lower half of the table particularly appropriate in- dicators of trends in the timing of first marriage. These proportions have also fallen substantially-- marriage before age 25 was 24% lower among the most recent cohort than among those reaching this age around 1970. Nonetheless, the declines in marriage before age 25 are not as large as the declines before age 20, indicating, as we would expect, that some of the decline in teenage marriages represents a postponement into the early twenties.

We turn next to columns four, five, and six, which present information on the percentage of

respondents who had ever been in a union before age 20 or 25, where "union" includes both marriages and cohabiting unions. The major finding is that the decline in having lived in a marriage-like relationship by a given age is substantially less than the decline in marriage experience by that age. Whereas the percentage ever married before age 20 declined 49% between 1970 and 1985, the percentage ever in union before age 20 declined by just 20070. And the gap is even smaller in experience by age 25: in 1970, 75% of all young adults had been in a union before this age; whereas in 1985, 69% had been in a union-a rather modest drop of six percentage points.

The last column provides a rough indicator of the extent to which increased cohabitation compensated for the decline in rates of marriage for each subgroup in the table. For instance, in the first row, the proportion ever married before age 20 declined by 49%, while the proportion ever in union before age 20 declined by only 20%, indicating that cohabitation compensated for 59% (49-20/49) of the decline in marriage. From this column it can be seen that cohabitation compensated for the drop in marriage before a given age more among females than males, blacks than whites, and the less educated more than the better




TABLE 2. RELATIVE CHANGE IN THE NUMBER OF YEARS IN MARRIAGE, AND NUMBER OF YEARS IN A UNION, BEFORE AGE 25: COHORTS REACHING THESE AGES AROUND 1970 AND 1985

Mean Number of Years before Age 25 Married In Any Union -% Change Union/

Category 1970 1985 % Change 1970 1985 70 Change % Change Married

Total 2.90 2.05 -29% 3.05 2.59 -15% 48% Males 2.15 1.37 -36 2.27 1.84 -19 47 Females 3.68 2.63 -28 3.83 3.23 -16 43 Whites 2.97 2.08 -30 3.10 2.56 -17 43 Blacks 2.43 1.36 -44 2.60 2.17 -17 61 Education

0-11 years 3.89 3.08 -21 4.32 3.87 -10 52 12 years 3.32 2.52 -24 3.33 3.11 -07 71 College 2.24 1.42 -37 2.34 1.86 -21 43

educated. About 40% of cohabiting unions in the United

States break up without the couple getting married, and this tends to occur rather quickly. By about one and one-half years, half of cohabiting couples have either married or broken up (Bum- pass and Sweet, 1989a). Consequently, the number of years in a union before age 25 may have declined even when the experience of a union by that age has remained relatively stable. Table 2 shows the number of years in marriage and number of years in any union before age 25. There was a 29% decline in the number of years in marriage before age 25, compared to the 15% decline in the number of years ever in a union by this age. Part of this, of course, reflects the decline in years married by age 25 as a consequence of later marriage among those who married before this age, and part also reflects the decreased stability of marital unions. However, it is also the case that cohabitation offset the decline in years in union less than the decline in the proportion ever in union by age 25 (48% as compared to 67%). Nonetheless, the increase in young adult years spent "single" is only about half that suggested by declining marriage rates.

Though the decline in number of years married before age 25 was greater among blacks, there was an identical 17% decline for both blacks and whites in the number of years in a union before that age.

In both Tables 1 and 2, it is clear that cohabitation has compensated for declining marriage least among persons who have attended college. For example, it offsets 84% of the decline in marriages before age 25 among persons not completing high school, compared to 63% of this decline

among those who attended college. This is contrary to the image of cohabitation as a college student phenomenon. The popular treatment of cohabitation has focused on college graduates or college students in urban areas-rather than on the consensual unions that were more common among the lower class. Thus there was the impres- sion that cohabitation was an innovation of college students in the 1960s, which then spread during the 1970s and 1980s to the rest of the population. Taking into account "common-law" marriages in the lower class, we might expect that cohabitation was rare outside the lower class before it was adopted by well-educated young adults in large metropolitan areas and then diffused widely across the middle and working classes. Evidence relating to this model has been slim. One Swedish study reports, to the contrary, that rates of consensual union formation were consistently higher among young working-class women than among young women from the bourgeoisie across birth cohorts, and consistently higher among nonstu- dents than among students (Hoem, 1986). The trends by education in Figure 3 speak directly to this issue. In order to control for possibly con- founding compositional changes over cohorts, the data graphed in this figure have been adjusted for age at marriage and race.

This figure does not support the diffusion model. Rather, it indicates that among the birth cohorts of the 1930s-who reached their mid- twenties in the late 1950s-cohabitation in young adulthood was restricted to a small minority in the lower educational groups. And it is among these same groups that the rise in cohabitation began in the late 1950s. By the 1960s, when the birth cohorts of the 1940s entered adulthood, the rise was




FIGURE 3. PERCENTAGE COHABITING BEFORE AGE 25, BY EDUCATION

60

50

40

30

0 20 -- LEGEND 0 /0-11 YEARS

10/ / 12 YEARS

0- . COL 1-3

o . ... - . . COL 4+

1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960

Midpoint of 5 Year Birth Cohort

under way among all groups. Then there was an acceleration in the 1970s of the rate of growth of cohabitation among nearly all educational groups. Finally, among the cohorts who have most recently reached their mid-twenties, the rapid growth continued for those with 12 years of school or less but slowed or stopped among those with one or more years of college.

At all times, the percentage cohabitating before 25 was least for the college-educated. This group did experience a surge in cohabitation during the 1970s, so the claim that they were radically changing their behavior was correct. But so was everyone else. It seems likely that college students attracted the attention of the media and aca- demics because they were the most visible component of a widespread phenomenon. College graduates have been not the innovators in the spread of cohabitation, but rather the imitators. This leaves more unsettled than ever the question of just why the transformation of union formation occurred. The inverse relationship with education does suggest, however, that one component may be the substitution of cohabitation for marriage in the early years of a union when there are economic constraints. We will see some related evidence on this point subsequently.

Postmarital Union Formation

Because of our high levels of marital instability, large proportions of the population experience separation or divorce. At the same time, rates of remarriage have fallen rapidly. We have seen that cohabitation has offset much of the decline in first marriage rates; to what extent has it also compensated for declining rates of remarriage?

We know that cohabitation is even more common among separated and divorced persons than among the never married. Sixty percent of persons who remarried between 1980 and 1987 lived with a partner before the remarriage-46% only with the person they then married and 14% with someone else (Bumpass and Sweet, 1989a). Table 3 presents the proportion remarrying, and the proportion forming any union, within five years of separation for cohorts that separated from 1963 to 1967 and from 1977 to 1981 (cohorts that had been separated for five years around 1979 and 1984, respectively). Although the proportion marrying within five years of separation declined 16% between 1970 and the early 1980s, the proportion who had formed a new union within five years ac- tually increased slightly. Hence, cohabitation has compensated fully for the fall in remarriage. There has been no decline in the pace of union formation following marital dissolution, although




TABLE 3. RELATIVE CHANGE IN THE PROPORTIONS EVER REMARRIED AND EVER IN A UNION WITHIN FIVE YEARS AFTER MARITAL SEPARATION:

SEPARATION COHORTS REACHING FIVE YEARS DURATION AROUND 1970 AND 1984

Percentage Remarried Percentage in Union within Five Years within Five Years

Category 1970a 1984b %7o Change 1970a 1984b 07 Change

Total 49% 42% -16% 58 62 7% Males 54 45 -17 67 70 4 Females 46 38 -16 52 56 8

aPersons separated 1963-67. bPersons separated 1977-81.

an increasing proportion of these unions are nonmarital.

CHARACTERISTICS OF COHABITORS

As outlined earlier, the NSFH provides a wealth of data on cohabiting couples that allow comparisons to married couples on the one hand and to other unmarried persons on the other. In this section we explore some preliminary clues about the nature of cohabiting relationships.

Duration and Presence of Children

We have already noted that cohabitation tends to be a very short-lived state. Only about 1 out of 10 remain cohabiting after five years without either marrying or breaking up. Nonetheless, this does not mean that there are few cohabitations of long duration at any point in time. Longer cohabitations tend to "accumulate" in the population, so there are more in the cross-section than we might expect from a cohort perspective. As we can see from Table 4, 20% of cohabiting couples have lived together for five or more years. The duration of cohabiting unions is longer among previously married persons, among whom only 30% began living together in the last year, compared to 39% among the never-married. We would expect mar-

TABLE 4. DURATION OF COHABITATION, BY WHETHER RESPONDENT WAS EVER MARRIED

Ever Married Duration Yes No Total

Less than 1 year 30% 39% 36%o 1-1.9 years 17 19 18 2-2.9 years 12 11 11 3-3.9 years 9 8 8 4-4.9 years 9 5 7 5 + years 23 17 20 Total 100 100 100

riage rates to be lower among the previously married because of their older age distribution. Whether there is a further disinclination to marry associated with having been previously married is a topic that warrants further examination, and one on which we will see more evidence subsequently.

The common image of cohabiting couples as college students, or at least young couples, does not usually include a family with children. Yet, 4 of every 10 such couples have children present (Table 5). This proportion is one-third among the

TABLE 5. PRESENCE OF CHILDREN IN HOUSEHOLD OF COHABITATING RESPONDENTS, BY WHETHER

RESPONDENT WAS EVER MARRIED

Ever Married Children Yes No Total

No children 53% 65 %o 60% Couple's 7 16 12 One partner's 39 22 27 Total 100 100 100

never-married and almost half among the previously married. One-sixth of never-married cohabiting couples have a child that was born since they began living together. As we noted in an earlier analysis of children's single-parent experience, this represents a significant component of unmarried births (about a quarter) that are not born into single-parent households (Bumpass and Sweet, 1989a).

Further, the children in cohabiting households are not all young children. In Table 6 we see that one-quarter of the households with children have children age 10 or older, mostly living with previously married parents. In thinking about the meaning of cohabitation and the dynamics of cohabiting households, it is critical to keep in




mind that issues of parenting and stepparenting are very much a part of the picture.

Attitudes toward Cohabitation

We turn now to several attitudinal items thatre-

TABLE 6. AGE OF YOUNGEST CHILD IN HOUSEHOLD OF COHABITATING RESPONDENTS, BY WHETHER


Ever Married Children Yes No Total

No children 54% 64% 60%0 0-4 16 24 21

5-9 14 7 10 10-17 16 5 10 Total 100 100 100

late to differences and similarities between cohabitation and marriage. One such sequence was a series of questions concerning how important various factors are in thinking about whether or not to live with someone without being married. Responses were on a 7-point scale ranging from "not at all important" to "very important." Table 7 shows the percentage of cohabitors who responded in the two categories at each end of the scale.

The only item that was regarded as "important" by a majority of the respondents was "couples can be sure they are compatible before marriage." A quarter of the respondents reported that opportunity to "share living expenses" was important.

TABLE 7. VIEWS ON REASONS FOR AND AGAINST COHABITATION: COHABITORS UNDER AGE 35

Reasons why a person might WANT to live with someone of the opposite sex without being married. How important is each reason to YOU?

Important Not Important Response Male Female Male Female

a. It requires less personal commitment than marriage. 14% 18% 46% 48% b. It is more sexually satisfying than dating. 17 18 49 59 c. It makes it possible to share living expenses. 28 26 32 29 d. It requires less sexual faithfulness than marriage. 12 10 64 69 e. Couples can be sure they are compatible before marriage. 51 56 18 16 f. It allows each partner to be more independent than marriage. 17 19 36 41

Reasons why a person might NOT want to live with someone of the opposite sex without being married. How important is each reason to YOU?

Important Not Important Response Male Female Male Female

a. It is emotionally risky. 13% 18% 47% 44% b. My friends disapprove. 4 4 84 82 c. My parents disapprove. 8 11 71 61 d. It is morally wrong. 6 9 75 60 e. It is financially risky. 7 7 64 55 f. It requires more personal commitment than dating. 19 25 43 40 g. It requires more sexual faithfulness than dating. 24 28 42 43

TABLE 8. VIEWS ON How BEING MARRIED WOULD CHANGE THEIR LIFE: COHABITORS UNDER AGE 35

Better Same Worse Aspect of Life Male Female Male Female Male Female

a. Standard of living 19 18 74 76 7 6 b. Economic security 24 32 67 61 9 7 c. Overall happiness 30 36 57 57 13 7 d. Freedom to do what you want 11 9 59 74 30 17 e. Economic independence 11 10 75 78 14 12 f. Sex life 22 14 68 81 10 5 g. Friendships with others 14 12 73 80 13 6 h Relations with parents 22 24 71 72 7 4 i Emotional security 28 38 63 57 9 5

Note: Cohabiting respondents age 35 and younger were asked, "How do you think your life might be different if you were married now?" A 5-point scale was used for responses. The "better" category above includes "somewhat better" and "much better." "Worse" includes "somewhat worse" and "much worse."




Though the idea of cohabitation as a testing ground for marriage includes an explicit tentative- ness about such relationships, issues of lower personal commitment or greater personal independence are not reported as important by very large proportions (only about 15% to 20%). These cohabiting couples may be rationalizing their current status, but there is very little concern with cohabitation being a moral issue or with the disap- proval of parents and friends.

How Married Life Would Be Different

Cohabitors were asked, "How do you think your life would be different if you were married now?" There were five response categories, ranging from "much worse" to "much better." Table 8 shows the percentage of cohabiting men and women responding in the two "better" and the two "worse" categories to each of these items.

The striking thing about these measures is that the majority response category for each of these items is that things would not change, that is, that they would be "the same." When differences are perceived, with few exceptions, more of the cohabitors believe that each of these conditions would improve rather than deteriorate if they were married. The most important exception is that nearly a third of men, but only about a sixth of the women, report that their "freedom to do what they want" would be worse if they were married. Apparently, this item captures an element of concern with independence that is not tapped by the measures on the importance of various consid- erations in Table 7.

A fairly sizable proportion of cohabiting respondents, especially women, report that their economic security and emotional security would be better if they were married.

A third of the respondents say that their overall happiness would improve if they were married now; a somewhat higher proportion of women than men report this. The meaning of this response is not clear. To the extent that the couple is not married because of some constraint (em- ployment instability or low income, an impending move associated with finishing school, or the fact that one of the partners is not yet divorced from a previous marriage), it may be that it is not the marriage itself that would make the person hap- pier, but the change in conditions that would make marriage possible.

Perceived Stability

While we do not have much evidence yet on the reasons, we know that cohabiting unions are much less stable than those that being as marriages (Balakrishnan, Rao, Lapierre-Adamcyk, and Krotki, 1987; Bennett, Blanc, and Bloom, 1988; Booth and Johnson, 1988). Forty percent will disrupt before marriage, and marriages that are preceded by living together have 50% higher disruption rates than marriages without premarital cohabitation (Bumpass and Sweet, 1989b). Several factors may be at work. On the one hand, it may just be that persons who are willing to cohabit are less traditional in their family values, and hence, at the same level of marital unhappi- ness, more likely to accept divorce as a solution (Booth and Johnson, 1988). For example, among unions of 10 or fewer years duration, cohabitors are much less likely to agree that "Marriage is a lifetime relationship and should never be ended except under extreme circumstances." Fifty-five percent agree with this statement, compared to 71% among married persons, net of duration and age differences.

It may also be that cohabiting unions are less well adjusted, other things being equal, either as a cause or as a consequence of cohabitation. On the one hand, there may well be a selection into cohabitation of persons more tentative about their relationship. Indeed, while some may be testing whether they should marry their partner, others may have no intention of marrying this partner. Some, perhaps because of experiences in their first marriage or personal problems of one sort or another, may not want to marry ever again. And, for those for whom cohabitation may be a substitute for marriage because of delaying circumstances, whether financial or a still existing marriage to someone else, those circumstances may have a negative impact on adjustment. At the same time, it is at least plausible that cohabitation

TABLE 9. MARRIAGE PLANS OF COHABITING RESPONDENTS, BY WHETHER


Ever Married

Marriage Plans Yes No Total

Definite plans 40% 50% 47% Think marry 21 31 27 Marry someone 6 6 6 Not marry anyone 30 13 20 Total 100 100 100




could have a direct causal impact on adjustment after marriage if, for example, habits of relating to each other (that seem appropriate to the unmarried) persist into marriage.

Marriage Expectations

In Table 9, we see the marriage expectations of our cohabiting respondents. Slightly less than half say they have definite plans to marry their partner, and 740%o either have definite plans or think they will marry this person. These figures are

somewhat higher among those who have never been married-81 % expect to marry their partner, compared with 61 07 among previously married cohabitors. On the other hand, a fifth of cohabiting persons do not expect to marry anyone; almost a third, among the previously married.

We can examine couple data for those cases in which the cohabiting partner completed the self- administered questionnaire. Not surprisingly, response rates of partners were higher for couples in which marriage was seen as more likely (80% of the primary respondents in these couples expected

TABLE 10. MARRIAGE ATTITUDES OF COHABITING RESPONDENTS: UNADJUSTED PROPORTIONS AND PROPORTIONS ADJUSTED FOR OTHER VARIABLES BY MULTIPLE CLASSIFICATION ANALYSIS

Troublea Marry Partnerb Never Marryc Variable Unadjusted Adjusted Unadjusted Adjusted Unadjusted Adjusted Duration

0 43% 39% 82% 82% 13% 14% 1-2.9 years 58 54 78 76 16 16 3+ years 48 54 61 62 32 28

Education Less than 12 years 37 45 66 73 28 22 12 years 54 51 76 72 19 22 College 1-3 years 54 52 75 72 19 21 College 4+ years 48 43 77 78 14 13

Sex Males 42 43 73 76 21 17 Females 56 54 73 70 20 24

Race/ethnicity Blacks 40 44 75 74 21 22 Whites 53 52 74 74 18 19 Mexican Americans 28 36 65 67 31 28

Presence of children No children 46 47 71 68 22 25 R's and partner's 62 62 76 79 24 20 R's, not partner's 52 48 81 89 13 7 Partner's only 49 56 62 62 32 31

Income < $10,000 41 40 73 66 19 26 $10,000-19,999 45 44 75 67 19 25 $20,000-29,999 44 42 70 70 24 23 $30,000-39,999 56 54 76 77 19 18 $40,000 + 59 62 79 86 16 10

Age Under 25 56 58 83 79 9 12 25-29 54 52 80 76 16 20 30-34 54 51 58 62 38 36 35+ 33 35 67 72 25 21

Married before Yes 42 47 63 64 31 27 No 54 50 81 80 13 16

Total 49% 73% 20%

aProportion responding "Yes" to "During the past year, have you ever thought that your relationship might be in trouble?"

bProportion responding "Yes" to either "Do you and your partner have any definite plans to get married?" or "Do you think that you will eventually marry him/her?"

CProportion responding "No" to "Do you think that you will eventually marry someone else?" That question was asked of persons responding "No" to the two preceding questions.




marriage, compared with 73% among all primary respondents). Among the couples for which we have joint data, there is a fairly high level of agreement about marriage expectations. Sixty- nine percent agree that they either plan or expect marriage, and 13% agree that they do not expect to marry each other. At the same time, this means that there is disagreement over whether marriage is expected in about one-fifth of the couples in which at least one partner expects marriage. Hence, the relatively high instability of cohabiting unions is not surprising when we consider that about a third either disagree about marriage or do not expect marriage.

As we might expect, cohabitors are not un- aware of the potential shakiness of their relationship. Almost half say that they have thought that their relationship might be in trouble in the last year-and in three of every four cohabiting relationships, at least one partner reports having thought the relationship was in trouble. Clearly, there is a good deal of uncertainty among cohabitors about the potential stability of their union. Compared with married respondents and adjusted for duration and age differences, cohabitors are almost twice as likely to report that they have thought their relationship was in trouble over the past year.

Table 10 provides information on differences among cohabitors with respect to whether they have thought their relationship might be in trouble, whether they think they will marry their partner, and whether they think they will ever marry.

Looking at the first panel of Table 10, we might expect that disruption would prune out less well-adjusted relationships. This would lead to a negative relationship with perceptions that the relationship was in trouble and a positive one with marriage plans. Relationships of over a year duration are more, rather than less, likely to agree to the "trouble" measure, while those of three or more years duration are less likely to expect to marry the partner and particularly likely to say they will never marry. Apparently the dominant selection process with increasing duration is associated with marriages of better-adjusted couples. In addition, some subset of longer-duration couples who plan never to marry may represent more traditional "common-law" marriages.

There is surprisingly little variation in these items by education, though the "trouble" measure peaks among those with some college and

then declines, and expectations of never marrying are lowest among those who completed college. Females are more likely than males to report trouble in the relationship, less likely to expect to marry the partner, and more likely to expect ever to marry, net of the other factors.

We might have expected that women would be reluctant to enter cohabiting relationships except for relationships believed to be a prelude to marriage. In fact, cohabiting women seem more tentative about marriage than cohabiting men.

Despite the higher levels of marital disruption among blacks, cohabiting blacks are less likely than cohabiting whites to report trouble in the relationship, and Mexican Americans are least likely to do so. Mexican Americans are also more likely to say that they will never marry, perhaps again reflecting traditions of consensual unions.

It seems clear that it is not just the presence of children, but whose children they are, that affects the relationship. Partner's children that are not the respondent's increase the report of trouble, and decrease marriage expectations, whereas if the respondent has children in the household that are not the partner's, it markedly increases the ex- pectation of marriage and decreases the expecta- tion of never marrying. There is surely an element of wishful thinking in this pattern, reflecting the associated economic and social costs.

The next panel provides a bit of a clue on the economic linkages between cohabitation and marriage. There is a clear positive relationship between the couple's income and expectations of marrying the partner, and a negative relationship between their income and expectations of never marrying. While the pattern is clear, it should be emphasized that a majority of even the lowest income group expect to marry their partner. Fur- ther, even though income is positively related to marriage plans, it is also positively related to reports of trouble in the relationship.

The age patterns in these variables are not as large or as consistent as we might have thought.

Cohabitors who have been married before are considerably less likely to expect to marry, either their partner or ever. This may be the beginnings of the pattern noted for Scandinavia by Blanc (1987), where cohabitation substitutes for remarriage for a majority of those experiencing marital disruption.




Attitudes toward Marriage among Never-Married Persons

Finally in this exploration of the connections between marriage and cohabitation, we turn to comparisons between cohabitors and other unmarried persons with respect to five items relating to marriage. The sample is restricted to persons under age 35 since the sequence for unmarried persons that collected many of these measures was restricted to this age range. The five measures were drawn from a large array of relevant indica- tors and do not begin to exhaust the potential for such comparisons, but they do speak to a number of important issues relating to our topic.

We will focus only on the total means for these variables in Table 11, and on the differences by cohabitation and previous marital experience. The means themselves are very revealing about the climate surrounding marriage and childbearing among unmarrieds. While older unmarrieds may well be selected for circumstances and attitudes leading to later marriage, the lack of much age variation on the attitude items suggests that is not a serious bias.

Contrary to the "coercive pronatalism" themes of the early 1970s (Blake, 1972), parental pressure to marry does not seem particularly salient. Only 30% of this sample agree that their parents would prefer it if they were married. The proportion increases markedly after age 25, but only reaches one-half among those in their late 30s. Never-married cohabitors are most likely to say that their parents would rather they were married, whereas previously married cohabitors are least likely (37% vs. 24%, respectively, net of other factors). The latter is somewhat surprising-perhaps parents are less likely to express opinions about their children's marriage choices after a separation or divorce.

Cohabitation is clearly a step between marriage and dating with respect to the constraints it places on individual freedom. Cohabitors feel marriage would make less difference in this respect than do others. Net of other factors, about a quarter of the cohabitors say that their freedom to do what they want would be worse if they were married, compared to about two-fifths of persons not cohabiting. As we observed for this item among cohabiting couples in Table 8, men seem much more concerned about the effect of marriage on their independence than women (49%0 vs. 31070).

Several years ago, Thornton and Freedman (1982) reported trends in attitudes concerning the relative merits of marriage and singleness. One startling aspect of that report from the Detroit Area Study was that only a third agreed that "It's better for a person to get married than to go through life being single." At the same time, two- thirds also disagreed that being single was better. Thornton and Freedman put an optimistic face on this, emphasizing that most seemed to think that it should be a matter of personal choice. That in itself is startling in the context of traditional norms concerning marriage, but we can also note that a third either were indifferent or thought it preferable to remain unmarried.

We repeated the first item and also find that only a third agree that marriage is better; indeed, a quarter explicitly disagree. There is also surprisingly little difference by either cohabitational or previous marital status. While the difference is not large, it is notable that males are more likely to agree that marriage is better than are females (37% compared to 30%).

We asked a similar item concerning whether "It's better for a person to have a child than to go through life childless." Only 29% agreed with this, and 25% explicitly disagreed.

Finally, the last item considered in Table 11 concerns the issue of bearing children out of wedlock. One-quarter of recent births were to unmarried mothers; rates among white women have more than doubled since the mid-1970s. As we noted earlier, children are frequently born to cohabiting couples. A third of unmarried persons under age 35 agree that "It would be all right for me to have children without being married" if they had plans to marry; a quarter disagreed with this. Over a quarter thought it would be all right even if they did not have plans to marry.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The large increases in the proportion never married among persons in their early twenties is com- monly interpreted to mean that young people are staying single longer. Because of cohabitation, however, being unmarried is not synonymous with being single. Young people are setting up housekeeping with partners of the opposite sex at almost as early an age as they did before marriage rates declined. Three-quarters of the decline in the proportion of women married for the first time by



TABLE 11. ATTITUDES TOWARD MARRIAGE AMONG NEVER-MARRIED PERSONS UNDER AGE 35: UNADJUSTED PROPORTIONS AND PROPORTIONS ADJUSTED FOR OTHER VARIABLES BY MULTIPLE CLASSIFICATION ANALYSIS

Parents Prefer Freedom Worse if Marriage Better Better Childbearing Unmarried Marrieda Marriedb than Singlec than Childlessd Birth OKe

Un- Un- Un- Un- Un- Variable adjusted Adjusted adjusted Adjusted adjusted Adjusted adjusted Adjusted adjusted Adjusted

Cohabiting Previously married 36% 24% 21% 24% 29% 30% 30% 29% 37% 34% Never married 40 37 24 25 36 32 34 33 45 44

Not cohabiting Previously married 42 29 37 42 32 34 30 30 33 31 Never married 27 29 45 44 34 34 28 28 27 28

Education < 12 years 36 34 34 37 26 40 41 38 36 34 12 years 31 31 39 39 29 30 30 30 33 32 College 1-3 years 34 32 44 45 35 35 28 28 34 33 College 1-3 years, enrolled 13 20 45 43 33 33 24 25 20 23 College 4 + years 40 34 47 46 36 36 18 20 26 26 College 4+ years, enrolled 35 31 45 35 52 52 38 40 21 22

Sex Males 29 29 49 49 37 37 30 30 31 31 Females 31 31 31 31 30 30 28 27 29 29

Race /ethnicity Blacks 30 28 36 38 31 31 35 34 39 38 Whites 28 28 43 42 32 32 24 25 28 28 Mexican Americans 46 43 37 37 48 49 48 46 30 29

Age Under 25 19 20 42 41 33 33 28 29 28 29 25-29 44 42 42 42 37 36 30 30 34 33 30-34 49 47 37 43 33 33 29 29 33 31

Total 30% 41% 34% 29% 30%

aProportion responding "Strongly agree" or "Agree" on a 5-point scale to "My parents would like it better if I were married now." bProportion responding "Much worse" or "Somewhat worse" on a 5-point scale to "For each of the following areas, please circle how you think your life

might be different if you were MARRIED now ... (d) freedom to do what you want." cProportion responding "Strongly agree" or "Agree" on a 5-point scale to "It's better for a person to get married than to go through life being single." dProportion responding "Strongly agree" or "Agree" on a 5-point scale to "It's better for a person to have a child than to go through life childless." eProportion responding "Strongly agree" or "Agree" on a 5-point scale to "Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each of the following

statements: ... (d) It would be all right for me to have children without being married-If I had definite plans to marry the father/mother."

(Q 0S

0?

0




age 25 was offset by increased cohabitation. Nor does the decline in remarriage mean that separated and divorced persons are staying single longer. All of the decline in the proportion of separated and divorced persons who remarried within five years was offset by increased cohabitation.

Contrary to the popular image of cohabitation as a college student phenomenon, the trend toward cohabitation has been led by the least educated segment of the population, and the role of cohabitation in replacing early marriage is most pronounced for persons who have not completed high school. We have examined a number of characteristics of current cohabitors to shed more light on the nature and meaning of cohabitation. Cohabiting relationships tend to have been formed recently, though one in five have been cohabiting for five years or more. Further, 40% of cohabiting households include children. Thus in many ways currently cohabiting couples resemble married families. Most cohabitors expect to marry their partner, though we find a surprisingly high level of disagreement between partners about whether they will marry, and a high proportion are concerned about the stability of their relationship.

Attitudes concerning cohabitation and marriage suggest that while most expect to marry, normative pressures toward marriage are not very high. Indeed, one-fifth of cohabiting persons do not expect ever to marry (or marry again). Among all unmarried persons, only a minority agree that it is better to marry than to go through life single. One-third say it would be alright for them to have a child without being married. While most expect to marry and have children, normative pressures toward marriage and childbearing and against unmarried childbearing appear very weak.

Thus the picture that is emerging is that cohabitation is very much a family status, but one in which levels of certainty about the relationship are lower than in marriage. This is partially a result of the use of cohabitation as a testing ground for marriage. We will never be able to determine the proportion of current cohabitators who would have been married at the same stage in their relationship under the regime of the late 1960s. Nonetheless, it is clear that we must include cohabitation along with marriage if we are to understand family life in modern societies.

REFERENCES

Balakrishnan, T. R., K. V. Rao, E. Lapierre-Adamcyk, and K. J. Krotki. 1987. "A hazard model analysis of the covariates of marriage dissolution in Canada." Demography 24: 395-406.

Bennett, Noel G., Ann Klimas Blanc, and David E. Bloom. 1988 "Commitment and the modern union: Assessing the link between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability." American Socio- logical Review 53: 127-138.

Blake, Judith. 1972. "Coercive pronatalism and Ameri- can population policy." In Robert Parke and Charles F. Westoff (eds.), Aspects of Population Growth Policy (Vol. 6). Washington, DC: Commis- sion on Population Growth and the American Future.

Blanc, Ann Klimas. 1987. "The formation and dissolution of second unions: Marriage and cohabitation in Sweden and Norway." Journal of Marriage and the Family 49: 391-400.

Booth, Alan, and David Johnson. 1988. "Premarital cohabitation and marital success." Journal of Fami- ly Issues 9: 255-272.

Bracher, Michael, and Gigi Santow. 1988. "Changing family composition from Australian life-history data." Working Paper No. 6, Australian Family Project, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University', Canberra, Australia.

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Bumpass, Larry L., and James A. Sweet. 1989a. "Chil- dren's experience in single-parent families: Implica- tions of cohabitation and marital transitions." NSFH Working Paper No. 3, Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin.

Bumpass, Larry L., and James A. Sweet. 1989b. "Na- tional estimates of cohabitation: Cohort levels and union stability." Demography 25: 615-625.

Cherlin, Andrew. 1981. Marriage, Divorce, Remar- riage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hoem, Jan M. 1986. "The impact of education on modern family-union formation." European Journal of Population 2: 113-133.

Hoem, Jan M., and Bo Rennermalm. 1982. "Cohabita- tion, marriage, and first birth among never-married Swedish women in cohorts born 1926-1960." Stockholm Research Reports in Demography, No. 8, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden.

Leridon, Henri, and Catherine Villeneuve-Gokalp. 1989. "The new couples: Number, characteristics, and attitudes." Population 44, English Selection No. 1: 203-235.

Rao, K. Vaninadha. 1990. "Marriage risks, cohabitation and premarital births in Canada." European Journal of Population 6(1): 27-49.

Sweet, James A., and Larry L. Bumpass. 1987. Ameri- can Families and Households. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.




Sweet, James A., Larry L. Bumpass, and Vaughn R. A. Call. 1988. "The design and content of the National Survey of Families and Households." NSFH Work- ing Paper No. 1, Center for Demography and

Ecology, University of Wisconsin. Thornton, Arland, and Deborah Freedman. 1982.

"Changing attitudes toward marriage and single life." Family Planning Perspectives 14: 297-303.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Marriage and Family Review

Special Issue: Single-Parent Families

The journal Marriage and Family Review is inviting and soliciting manuscripts for a special issue on Single-Parent Families. The collection of articles will examine a broad scope of subjects focusing on single- or one-parent families or where one person is primarily responsible for parenting the children. The special issue is intended to be written and read by family professionals in many disciplines, such as family social scientists, sociologists, psychologists, health care professionals, social workers, therapists, and other researchers, clinicians, and educators of the family.

Manuscripts that focus on a variety of content areas are desired. Proposal topics include but are not limited to single mothers and fathers following divorce; noncustodial mothers and fathers following divorce; single mothers and fathers following death of one parent; adoptive single parents (male and female); never-married teen parents (mother and father); and grandparents as primary parents. The underlying goal of this special issue is a synthesis of literature, research, and practice regarding families with one parent. Manu- scripts should include a review of the literature on the topic, demographics, synthesis of the research, and implications for research, practice, education, and social policy.

Manuscript proposals will be reviewed by the four guest editors of this special issue: Shirley Hanson, Marsha Heims, Doris Julian, and Marvin Suss- man. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines of the Ameri- can Psychological Association, and four copies should be submitted.

If you are interested in submitting a paper for this special issue, please call or write the first editor by January 1992.

Shirley M. H. Hanson, PhD Department of Family Nursing Oregon Health Sciences University 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road Portland, OR 97201-3098 Tel. 503-494-8382 FAX 503-494-4496



the role of cohabitation in declining rates of marriage

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