As promulgators of luminous social doctrines, the Woodstock Generation celebrated the belief that living together could provide all the benefits of wedlock without imposing all of marriage's oppressive restrictions. This belief has now so fully insinuated itself into academic and political rhetoric that many who subscribe to it regard resistance as symptomatic of blind ignorance. But in a recent and thoroughly empirical comparison of the two social arrangements, researchers from the University of Michigan and the Centro de Estudios de Polación in Argentina conclude that when couples enter into nonmarital cohabitation, they are embarking on a far riskier and less stable life course than are peers who tie the marital knot.
To evaluate the comparative character of cohabitation and wedlock, the Michigan and Argentine scholars examined data collected between 1962 and 1993 for 906 white men and women born in 1961 in the Detroit area. Their findings offer nothing at all to support the views of those championing cohabitation as a modern equivalent to marriage. The researchers leave no doubt as to the relative fragility and impermanence of cohabitation: "In every case in which we compare a transition that denotes interrupting living with the partner, such as separation or living apart, cohabitors have significantly higher rates than their married peers." The Michigan and Argentine researchers calculate that within two years, almost one third (32.4%) of cohabiting couples in their study had separated, compared to less than one-tenth of married couples (8.3%). Overall, the data for the study period indicate that "cohabitors have rates of separation nearly five times as high as married couples" (Odds Ratio of 4.62).
Going the other direction, the authors of the new study find that once cohabiting couples separate, they are far less likely to reconcile. "If separation occurs," the researchers observe, "...cohabitors have rates of reconciliation only 33% as high as those who are in marital unions."
The Michigan and Argentine scholars interpret their findings as evidence buttressing "past research that views marriage as a relationship that is qualitatively distinctive from cohabitation with a higher degree of commitment and stability than cohabitation."
So much for the Age of Aquarius.
