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Fresh data on cohabitation
Thirteen million unmarried, heterosexual couples live together (2008 U.S. Census data), and researchers believe nearly 60% of couples getting married cohabitate prior to tying the knot.
However, the majority reason given for cohabitation differs from prevailing conception. Although surveys reveal that young people believe cohabitation is a good way to test out a relationship, only 9% of men and 5% of women say that they are cohabiting for that precise reason.
By contrast, nearly half the respondents cited “spending more time together” as the reason for their living under the same roof.
An article in USA Today provides a sampling of data from a new federal study of unmarried young adults, showing that “49% of dating couples and 30% of cohabitors surveyed agree that ‘my religious beliefs suggest that it is wrong for people to live together without being married,’ and “Of those cohabiting, 66% moved in before making plans to marry; 23% planned to marry but weren’t engaged, and 11% moved in when they got engaged.”
I find it fascinating that half of young adults indicate the presence of a religious belief compelling them not to cohabitate. Do we see 50% of the young adult characters in television and movies wrestling with the moral dimension of cohabitation? By popular depiction of this age-demographic in entertainment, you might think that it is an absolute foregone conclusion that there is no reason not to cohabitate.
As the article also notes, earlier research data released this year in the Journal of Family Psychology “suggests cohabiting before engagement is associated with lower marital satisfaction.”
Thinking with gospel eyes, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 comes to mind: “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Whether for the reason of “trying out the relationship,” or for “spending more time together,” cohabitation is a gospel issue in that our bodies are not our own, they belong to another, and we are to glorify the owner with them.
back to top17 Comments to “Fresh data on cohabitation”
I have no direct experience with shacking up. Didnt move in with my wife until we returned from our honeymoon. A man I know well and respect some years back went to California with his then-girlfriend to meet her parents. That’s a drive from Austin Tx to Redding California. It was quite shocking at the time since he was a vocal pre-seminarian
I think its important to learn to live with others but to avoid the appearance of impropriety I tell gals to get gal roommates, and dudes to get dudes.
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I wonder how many checked this survey answer:
To get sex without commitment or responsibility
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I think that personal bias explains why people are answering the questions this way. It’s not a stretch to read “spending more time together” as a more romantic way of saying “testing out the relationship.”
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I’m surprised the study didn’t focus on economics. For many couples it’s simply an economic decision to move in together, especially if marriage is planned, rather than maintain two households.
And there are some unstated assumptions about what ‘religious beliefs’ means. I suspect that those who said that they had religious beliefs that counsel against cohabitation (including 30 percent of cohabitators) were really commenting on what their faith tradition says as a matter of fact, not what they personally believe. As the study shows, just about every 20-24 year old surveyed is or has been sexually active irrespective of what the Church says about that.
Most notable is that only 29 percent believe there is anything wrong with cohabitating at all — that’s significantly down from a generation ago.
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I guess if you say your religious beliefs say it’s wrong, that means you think it’s wrong, too. But wrong how, I wonder? Gone are the days when local authorities prosecuted people for “lewd and lush,” as they called it back in the days of America’s greatness.
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Cohabitating (shacking up, as Sawgunner put it) is simply what people do when they don’t really believe in marriage, at least not strongly enough to actually practice it.
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If their religious beliefs tell then it’s wrong, and they act contrary to those beliefs, I don’t think their beliefs were really theirs,but their churches or their family’s beliefs.
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Most young people simply have no idea that living together before marriage has a lot of negatives. There is a reason for God to tell us not to do something and statistics bear that out when it comes to cohabitation. More people divorce after cohabiting and then marrying. More report less satisfying sex lives.
An interesting book that lends some idea why this happens is “His Brain, Her Brain” by the Larimores.
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I too am surprised economics isn’t the focus. Most university couple move in to save money. Basically the argument is we have sex anyway why keep up the hypocritical facade especially when it costs money.
The divorce rate is higher for common-law relationships that then marry. Its not morality (maybe bad karma) rather many people change their expectations when they get legally married. When one half of the couple changes expectation and the other doesn’t then conflict ensues.
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Seems to me that that this survey only shows another symptom of the demise of the American moralist Christianity. Not to say the Christianity in America is dead, just the social pressure to subscribe to a Christian moral system. The only solution is a radical change in the individual souls of this (my) generation.
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Nacman09: I agree with you. (11)
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I should say, I agree with you, that it is best if people obey God because they have changed hearts. However, many people have been helped to do what is right simply by knowing that it is the best thing for them in the long run or because it is a societal more.
It is important to get the truth out that not having sex outside of marriage is the best thing for individual and for society as a whole. There are a lot of reasons to say that is true. That message should get out there, although there are a lot of people who don’t want to hear it and will fight against it.
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I thought couples cohabitated so that the man could show the woman that he had enough sense to put the seat down? ? ? ?
Actually economics play a much much bigger role in all of this. While the cynics say ‘The moral fiber….. blah blah. And the other cynics say No need for a pretense….blah blah. The real reasons may be much much more complex. Painting the whole with one brush does not make sense. Certainly some are terribly immoral. Some are terribly pragmatic. Some are totally ignorant. Some just want to save money as they are scared of Barack Obama’s economy.
Frankly I pray for all of my tenants. No matter what the relationships are. I also do not make an immediate link that cohabitation is necessarily ’shacking up’. (For the ease of Democratic readers,,,, think of illegal immigrants….)
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How do you spell Love? = c_o_m_m_i_t_m_e_n_t
How do you spell Marriage = MORE c_o_m_m_i_t_m_e_n_t
How does one resolve issues/problems? even More c_o_m_m_i_t_m_e_n_t
What’s the final result? FULFILLMENT
Well… at least we can commit to personal gratification. If it’s good enough for me… It’s good enough for me.
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Borrowing a great deal here from C S Lewis, we tend to forget (or ignore) that God tells us when a man and a woman join themselves in sexual union a new creature is formed. God does not say the couple must be married. If a man unites himself to a prostitute he becomes one with her in body. (1 Cor 6:16)
The dilemma, I believe, is that we do not properly nor fully understand what it means to “be one,” a “new creature.” Marriage is a holy union of a man and woman, approved and legitimized by God and honored by Him. To attempt to circumvent the blessing of marriage by “trying it out beforehand” dishonors God and defeats an eternal intent.
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Allen Wrench,
Some people have used that verse to say that they were ‘married in God’s eyes’. I don’t think that this idea conforms to scripture. Take, for instance, Jesus talking to the woman at the well, where John 4:16-18 (ESV) states:
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
I think that it is clear in this passage that Jesus didn’t consider her married just because she was (apparently) cohabiting.
1 Cor. 6 acknowledges that some people join themselves just for physical reasons, but is saying that when one becomes a Christian he is one (in a sense, married) with God, and this passage is emphasizing the decadence of dishonoring that bond.
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