A recent Boston Globe article pointed out the increasing frequency of cohabiting couples who have children together. What was once remarkably rare is becoming a more and more common occurrence. In fact the article cites a statistic that shows that 52% of children born out of wedlock are born to couples who are cohabiting. Is this a good thing? Well there is not a lot of research comparing cohabiting couples and married couples, and very little work investigating the effect of cohabiting on child development.

The link between cohabitation and relationship quality is fairly clear. Cohabiting couples tend to be less satisfied than married couples, and those who cohabitate before they get engaged tend to be less happy, have more problems, and be more likely to get divorced if they do get married (see Stanley, Rhoades, & Markman, 2006 for an excellent review of this work), it has become known as the cohabitation effect. Why does cohabiting relate to worse relationship outcomes? Research points to two reasons

First, those who are less likely to wait to move in together until they are married also tend to be more religious, less likely to be from parents who are divorced, be in a higher socio-economic status, and be more traditional. All of these demographic characteristics predict couples being less likely to divorce and having more resources to make a better marriage. In other words, people who are less likely to get divorced are also more likely to wait to cohabitate until after they are married.

Second, the process of who elects to move in together and how living together effects their relationship may lead to the relationship being less satisfying in the long run. Some couples believe that moving in together is a way of testing their relationship, others think that it is a good intermediary step, they are not fully committed to the relationship, so they feel that living together is a good step that doesn’t carry the weight of commitment, and still others want to feel financially secure before they get married so move in together to save money. But once people are living together they often slide into marriage. In other words, they don’t actively choose to take on the commitment of marriage, rather they get married because it is the right or next thing to do. Because they are not as committed to the relationship, they tend to be less satisfied and more likely to divorce.

But are children worse off in these relationships? There is only one study that I found that addresses this issue. Stacey Aronson and Aletha Huston of the University of Texas at Austin showed that children in married families demonstrated more positive behavior and better interactions with their mothers than those in single parent families and cohabiting families, and there were few differences between single mother and cohabiting parents. Why? Those who were married had better relationships (less ambivalence, more love, more intimacy), more income relative to their needs, were better adjusted psychologically, and had more progressive ideas about child rearing.

Does this mean that single families and cohabiting families are doomed? Well as I was raised in a single parent family and turned out pretty good (if I do say so myself) I don’t think so. And in fact other research shows that there is no cohabitation effect in Europe, cohabiting couples do just as well as married couples (Kiernan, 2002).

So, non-married relationship can be just as stable and just as fulfilling. Researchers aren’t quite sure what differs between European cultures and ours that explains why this happens yet, but they should know soon.

Further Reading:

For the Boston Globe Article

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/07/24/marry_marry_quite_contrary_/

For more information on the science see the excellent review by

Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sliding versus deciding: Inertia and the premarital cohabitation effect. Family Relations, 55, 499-509.

See also

Aronson, S. R., Huston, A. C., (2004). The mother-infant relationship in single, cohabiting, and married families: A case for marriage? Journal of Family Psychology, 18, 5-18.

Kiernan, K., (2002). Cohabitation in Western Europe: Trends, issues, and implications. In A. Booth & A. C. Crouter (Eds.), Just Living Together: Implications of cohabitation on families, children, and social policy (pp. 3-31). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.