Cohabitation and Marriage

Valarie King and Mindy E. Scott

"A Comparison of Cohabiting Relationships Among Older and Younger Adults"

Journal of Marriage and the Family, May 2005, 67:271-285

When one refers to "cohabitation," there are certain connotations associated with the idea; some people see this as perhaps a situation leading up to marriage. It can also be viewed as an institution taking place of marriage. I will be analyzing Valarie King and Mindy E. Scott's article, "A Comparison of Cohabiting Relationships Among Older and Younger Adults," as related to several other writings for class. While King and Scott's piece introduces novel aspects of cohabitation, one is also able to observe similar and contrasting perspectives in the other articles. Several distinct themes are present, and the concept of "cohabitation" is clearly one of controversy.

King and Scott analyze variation in the manner that different age groups perceive cohabitation. They assert that while cohabitation is embraced primarily by younger couples, it is continually gaining popularity among older people. A few key factors could be contributing to this, including the high rate of divorce. The authors examine several elements to determine the "difference" in cohabitation between age groups. They concentrate on "quality and perceived stability" in the relationships, as well as the reasons couples are cohabiting. Additionally, the couples are inquired as to whether or not they intend to marry. As opposed to previous research, which examines causes of cohabitation as well as the quality of it, King and Scott use such research to find differences among age groups. They focus primarily on the couples' reasons for cohabiting, including "level of commitment required, sexual satisfaction, sexual faithfulness, sharing living expenses, assessing compatibility, and independence." They hypothesize that older adults will perceive a higher relationship and be less likely to marry, as the older cohorts are more likely to be divorced or widowed; on the other hand, younger couples are more likely to cohabit as a prelude to marriage. Results yielded show that the older couples living together had been in relationships longer and were more likely to have already cohabited with another person. Also, as predicted, the older couples reported having more stable relationships, and levels of happiness were directly related to age groups. Conversely, plans to marry were prominent among younger couples. So, despite reportedly lower levels of satisfaction regarding their relationships, younger couples are more likely to live together before a planned marriage. In concluding the article, King and Scott report the differences found in "quality, meaning, and purpose" of cohabiting relationships between older and younger age groups. Several questions arrive out of their findings: Why are older couples more likely to use cohabitation as an alternative to the institution of marriage? Why are younger couples more likely to marry, even with a lower level of satisfaction? The other articles assigned can indirectly address these topics.

First of all, Arlene Skolnick's article, "Grounds for Marriage: How Relationships Succeed or Fail" states that there are "two marriages, the husband's and the wife's." The assertion is similar to results found by King and Scott, in which couples cohabitating perceived their relationships differently. On a different note, Casper and Bianchi's article, "Cohabitation" reiterates the fact that younger adults are more likely to cohabit and that currently the majority of couples marrying have previously lived together. Possible reasons for this particular trend include shifting norms for younger generations and financial benefits of cohabitation. Also, because of rising divorce rates, many young couples are apprehensive about jumping into marriage and wish to experience "the benefits of an intimate relationship without committing to marriage." However, this writing is also comparable to King and Scott's in the way that it also depicts the spreading of cohabitation into older age groups. Casper and Bianchi found that in 1978, more than 60% of couples living together were under age 35; in 1998, many more were found to be in mid-30s and up. The authors emphasize social revolutions as another possible factor: gender roles, attitudes toward divorce, and individualism can influence whether or not a couple decides to live together and not marry. This can be compared to King and Scott's article; older couples (perhaps some of whom have already experienced divorce or previous cohabitation) may wish to simply exist in an intimate relationship without constraints of marriage. But due to the spread of cohabitation, concerns are arising that it will replace marriage as the familial living situation of choice. This is in some way dealt with in other readings.

In Skolnick's article, she poses the question of whether or not marriage is a dying institution. While marriage is still quite alive, the rates are definitely declining. Could this be an effect of the growing establishment of cohabitation? Attitudes towards marriage in the past few decades have clearly evolved, and since there has been a "transformation in the way people look at marriage," perhaps this could foster tendencies towards alternative situations, such as cohabitation. However, many things in this article do not add up to match with King and Scott's. People are waiting until longer to get married; this could account for couples who cohabit before marriage, but does not explain the idea that cohabitation is replacing marriage as an institution. Another article, by Frank F. Furstenberg, claims that there are certain benefits of marriage, creating it a "luxury item." This promotes two important questions: what are the reasons people would choose to simply live together over marry each other? What are the opposing benefits of cohabitation and marriage? Perhaps these contrasting ideas can explain the difference in cohabitation between age groups, as found in King and Scott's article. Another extremely contrasting perspective is found in Andrew Cherlin's article, "Should the Government Promote Marriage?". While he also asserts that marriage is on the decline, he questions whether or not the government should create policies that would prefer marriage "over other family forms," such as cohabitation. It seems like while King and Scott view living together as something that can precede marriage, Cherlin sees it as strictly as an alternative. This leads to one of King and Scott's main questions: IS cohabitation preceding marriage, and is this primarily among younger adults?

A key passage in the analyzed reading involves the research using couples' plans to marry as a measurement of "the nature" of the cohabitation, and how this is associated with age groups. It is interesting to distinguish the qualities and characteristics of relationships between generations, and this is the very core of King and Scott's piece. Is cohabitation related to marriage or not, and if so, to what degree? The authors use two separate waves of questions to determine this: the first wave asks the respondent about definite plans to marry the person with whom they are cohabiting (yes or no). In the second wave, they inquire about the "perceived likelihood" of marriage, on a scale of 1 to 5. While age was found to be a good predictor of this, gender was also a variable. However, through the two waves of study, King and Scott discovered that older couples were in fact less likely to possess plans to marry than younger couples. Later in the article, the authors question if such a lack of marriage plans have an effect on the quality of the relationship, the answer to which was again more distinctive in the younger age category. This particular passage is important, since it provides some insight to the ways younger couples understand cohabitation.

In conclusion, King and Scott's article provides interesting statistics and data about the custom of cohabitation, as well as including the way the institution is related to marriage. Some of the aspects brought up in their piece can be related or contrasted to other assigned articles regarding cohabitation and marriage. I think several other factors would also be interesting to study within the subject, such as religious beliefs or socioeconomic status. But I found the article, as a whole, extremely informative and interesting.