On the marriage front, we are somewhere past the beginning of a movement to scale back the high divorce rates that have frightened and mystified us for the past several decades. A
Why is cohabitation so risky to children? Compared with marriage, cohabitation furnishes less commitment, stability, sexual fidelity, and safety to romantic partners and their chil
This document summarizes the history, so far, of our work in studying cohabitation. A central aspect of our work is measuring aspects of commitment directly rather than inferring c
Marriage, a prominent institution regulating sex, reproduction, and family life, is a route into classical philosophical issues such as the good and the scope of individual choice,
Cohabitation is replacing marriage as the first living together experience for young men and women. When blushing brides walk down the aisle at the beginning of the new millennium,
Premarital cohabitation has consistently been found to be associated with increased risk for divorce and marital distress in the United States. Two explanations for this “cohabita
In marriage, through the covenant of conjugal love, all the responsibilities that result from the bond that has been made are taken on publicly. From this public assumption of res
The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture
While the terms ‘Cohabitation’ or ‘Living together’ could refer to any circumstance in which any number of people reside in the same home, they have traditionally been used to refer to a situation in which an unmarried couple who are sexual partners share the same dwelling. The point of this terminology was not just to describe the factual situation but to contrast it with that of regular marriage which was thereby presumed to be the proper situation for those in an ongoing sexual relationship. Cohabiting couples are sometimes said to be in a ‘common law partnership’ and in some legal codes this is deemed to be a form of marriage conferring legal rights on the parties. Traditionally the moral case against cohabitation was that it lacked the commitments to exclusive fidelity required by formally recognised institutional marriage, was without legal responsibilities, and rendered any children illegitimate thereby stigmatising them and denying them certain protections conferred under law. Indicative of the historic negative connotation of the term is the fact that as more people chose to live together unmarried so use of the term to describe that situation has declined.