How Cohabitation is Growing
How quickly is cohabitation growing as a family trend? How many Americans are cohabiting and how many cohabiting homes have children?
- The number of cohabiting couples has grown 1000 percent in the United State since 1960 with more than 4.7 million U.S. couples currently cohabiting.1
- From 1965 to 1974, only 10% of marriages were preceded by cohabitation. From 1990 to 1994 that number had increased to 56% and remains there today.2
- In 1994, over 90 percent of cohabitors report they plan to marry someone, if not their current partner, at some point in their lives.3
- In 2000, Journal of Marriage and the Family reported that 70% of both African-American and Caucasian cohabitors believed they would marry their mate eventually. In reality, 60% of whites actually did formalize their unions, but fewer than 20% of black cohabitors did.4(Information was not available for Hispanics.)
- However this has significantly changed of late. Researchers Wendy Manning of Bowling Green State University and Pamela Smock, University of Michigan report that currently one out of four women who live with their boyfriends don’t expect to marry him.5
- More than one third of cohabiting households contain children.6 A recent estimate claims that nearly half of all children today will spend some time in a cohabiting family by age 16.7
- 70% of these children are the child of only one partner.8 (This is alarming considering that a child not living with both biological parents is 70 times more likely to be seriously abused or killed than children living with both biological or adoptive parents.9)
Given the many problems present in cohabiting relationships (“HOW HEALTHY ARE COHABITING RELATIONSHIPS?”) and how they negatively affect future relationships, (“DOES COHABITATION PROTECT AGAINST DIVORCE?”) it is important our culture find ways to curb the explosive growth of cohabitation.
1 Barbara Whitehead and David Popenoe, The State of Our Unions 2002, The National Marriage Project, Rutgers University, June 2002 (a), p. 22.
2 Pamela Smock, “Cohabitation in the United States: An Appraisal of Research Themes, Findings, and Implications,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 1-20
3 John D. Cunningham and John K. Antill, “Cohabitation and Marriage: Retrospective and Predictive Comparisons,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 11 (1994): 77-93.
4 Susan L. Brown, “Union Transitions Among Cohabitors: The Significance of Relationship Assessement and Expectations,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 833-846.
5 Wendy D. Manning and Pamela J. Smock, “First Comes Cohabitation Then Comes Marriage,” Journal of Family Issues 23 (2002): 1065-87.
6 Whitehead and Popenoe, 2002 (a), p. 22.
7 David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Should We Live Together: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Literature, National Marriage Project, Rutgers University, 2002 (b), p. 8.
8 Popenoe and Whitehead, 2002 (a), p. 29.
9 James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families, Harper Collins, 2002, p. 3.
Glenn T. Stanton is Director of Social Research and Cultural Affairs and Senior Analyst for Marriage and Sexuality at Focus on the Family. He is also author of Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society (Pinon Press), and more recently, My Crazy, Imperfect Christian Family (NavPress, 2004). He also co-authored the book, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting (Inter-Varsity Press, 2004).
If you enjoy reading stories like this one, sign up for the free CitizenLink Daily Update e-mail. You'll get news and commentary from Focus on the Family Action delivered right to your computer.
