Why cohabitation leads to divorce

As researchers move toward a more nuanced understanding of what cohabitation means for the future of unmarried romantic partners, several factors urgently need to be considered, according to the experts I spoke with. Lehmiller said studies of cohabitation should start working with data sets that include same-sex couples and move away from equating the stability of a marriage with its success.

People are simply experiencing more before committing to one partner for life, she said, and expectations of the institution are shifting accordingly. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic.

Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. They argued that prior studies showing no negative associations were based on samples that did not include marriages that had lasted long enough to fully capture the increased risk for divorce.

Rosenfeld and Roesler also showed something new in their study: cohabitation before marriage was associated with a lower risk of divorce in the first year of marriage but a higher risk thereafter.

They interpreted this finding in light of experience theories, noting that living together before marriage could give couples a leg up at the very start of marriage because there is less of an adjustment to being married and specifically to living together. But they found this advantage to be short-lived. Other factors related to experience may take over from there, such as how cohabitation can increase acceptance of divorce.

The articles illuminate the complexities of cohabitation and the challenges of studying the effects in social science. I refer you to that article for more background information. First, they argue that their statistical models include multiple and confounding measures of time. Second, they emphasize the important decisions one has to make about truncation based on age when using the National Survey of Family Growth NSFG , upon which all of the studies suggesting the association has disappeared are based.

Here is a sample of that complexity:. Another age truncation issue is that relatively long marriages cannot be observed with these data without bias toward those that occurred at young ages. For example, a year marriage can only be observed for women who married at age 29 or younger. This is the basis for their assertion that it is best to limit the analytic sample for this research to marriages of 10 or fewer years duration.

In essence, Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg argue that Rosenfeld and Roesler made a number of decisions about the sample and statistical modeling that are inconsistent with the prior literature and therefore not sound. They present further analyses in their response and stand by their claim that the cohabitation effect has disappeared. Rosenfeld and Roesler respond that Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg misinterpreted how time-related variables had been handled in their original study, noting that the authors of the critique could have asked for clarification instead of building arguments around false assumptions.

This is primarily the result of that decision to limit the analytic sample to marriages of 10 years or less duration. Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg contend that this is standard, best practice when using the NSFG, while Rosenfeld and Roesler argue the decision unnecessarily limits sample and statistical power, causing a data-based bias in favor of finding that there is no longer a divorce risk associated with premarital cohabitation.

Their reply also makes clear just how methodologically important their prior finding is showing that premarital cohabitation is associated with lower odds of divorce in the first year of marriage but greater odds thereafter. Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg attempted to replicate that finding and did not obtain it but using options they prefer, not the same set up as Rosenfeld and Roesler.

Rosenfeld and Roesler point out that their critique actually does display evidence of this finding, but that the effect was not statistically significant because of the smaller sample. In practice, that is not an unusual decision, but Rosenfeld and Roesler believe that this decision, along with the decision to restrict the sample based on duration of marriages, leads to analyses less likely to find the increased risk for divorce.

Filtering out the couples who have been married longer as MSK do enhances the Recent Cohort Fallacy because in the very early stages of marriages, premarital cohabitation reduces the risk of marital breakups.

Rosenfeld and Roesler also assert that Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg do not adequately account for the timing of children. They explain that cohabiters are much more likely than non-cohabiters to already have children at the time of marriage, and this difference has nearly doubled over the decades. Thus, cohabiting couples who married in later cohorts were quite a bit more likely than those marrying earlier to already have a child when they married, and the extra stability from having children that is changing by cohort is another factor that lowers the apparent cohort-based association between cohabitation and divorce.

Rosenfeld and Roesler stand by their conclusion that the average increased risk for divorce associated with premarital cohabitation is mostly unchanged over the last 40 years. Otherwise, not so much. This may indicate that couples who opted to live together prior to engagement may have slid into this commitment level, instead of making sure that they shared common goals for their future as a couple, thus putting them at higher risk for marital dissatisfaction and potentially divorce.

The Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement reports that there are about , same-sex married couple households and , same-sex couples who are cohabitating. Other stats include:. On average, marriages tend to last around eight years. Risk factors for divorce include intimate partner violence, substance abuse, infidelity, and lack of trust. Inability to connect, enduring high levels of stress, and having toddlers also can increase marital discord, and eventually lead to a divorce.

For couples who decide to move in together, just over half of them marry within five years. Within that same time period, 40 percent of couples split up. Roughly 10 percent of them continue to live together without being married. People who decide to live together may do so with the expectation that it will help them determine whether they will have a successful marriage with their partner.

People who decide to live with a partner may also be more likely to divorce if they are unhappy with the relationship after taking vows, since they may have less conservative views of marriage. Research indicates conflicting results regarding whether cohabitation before marriage increases chances of a later divorce if the couple marries.

These studies illustrate that the connection between pre-marital cohabitation and divorce are not a direct one, but instead a complex intermingling of various factors. Divorce Rates for Cohabitating Couples In a study of 16 countries , researchers noted that the relationship between cohabitating and marriage is not necessarily a direct one, but that there are many factors that impact why a couple opts to divorce regardless if they were cohabitating before marriage or not.

Key findings include: 10 percent more of adult children of parents who divorced versus remained married tended to begin their relationships with cohabitation before marriage. In Sweden, Norway, and France about 75 percent of couples cohabitated prior to getting married with about half ending in divorce. Over 75 percent of those cohabitating were not previously married in the majority of the countries studied.

In Sweden, cohabitating amongst younger couples was more popular around 70 percent , but around age 34 cohabitation without marriage declined to about 15 percent. Divorce rate in Sweden did increase, but that was immediately following a more relaxed approach to divorce laws. Factors Impacting Divorce Around the World In the international study mentioned above, the findings did not illustrate a direct relationship between cohabitating before marriage and getting a divorce later on.

Other findings included: An increase divorce rate preceded the increase in cohabitation rates in all 16 countries. Divorce rates tended to rise as divorce laws shifted in the s and s throughout the countries studied. Among cohabiters who are not currently engaged, those with at least some college education are more likely than those with less education to say they saw moving in with their partner as a step toward marriage.

About half of U. Just over half of cohabiting adults ages 18 to 44 are raising children, including about a third who are living with a child they share with their current partner. Views on this are also linked to partisanship. These gaps persist even when taking religion and age, which are strongly linked to partisanship, into account.

Cohabiters with and without children younger than 18 in the household are about equally likely to hold this view. About two-thirds of U. Relatively small shares of U.

References to whites, blacks and Asians include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Asians include Pacific Islanders. Hispanics are of any race. For the most part, the views and experiences of Asians are not analyzed separately in this report due to sample limitations.