Cover Story
by Carolyn Stent
Twenty-five percent of born-again Christians have cohabitated.
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Cohabitation now a
common choice
Katrina Turner, 27, faced a common problem: her roommate wanted to move out. She found a common solution: her boyfriend moved in. Six years later, Turner and Steve Genco, 27, still live together, but they have never married.
Turner and Genco joined the growing number of couples who choose to cohabit, or live together before marriage. Most statistics show a 500 percent increase over the last 40 years in the number of couples cohabiting. A 1992 study by the University of Chicago found that nearly 60 percent of couples cohabit, according to Bob Duff, professor of sociology at the University of Portland.
In a 2001 survey, Barna Research found that one out of every three American adults, 18 or older, have cohabited. Moreover, they reported that 25 percent of born-again Christian adults have cohabited.
The big change is in the people who choose to cohabit, Professor Duff said. He said that, in the 1950s and 1960s, cohabitation was associated with the lower class, but it has now moved through the entire class structure.
Moreover, Professor Duff said that both men and women are marrying later in life because they have educational aspirations and careers. Some people choose cohabitation because it requires a lower level of commitment.
Bonnie Kopp, professor of women's ministries at Multnomah Bible College, worked as a public health counselor for teenage girls with high-risk pregnancies in both North Carolina and Vancouver, Wash. She estimated that 90 percent of her clientele cohabited with a partner.
Professor Kopp said that the reasons couples cohabit now cover a broader spectrum. In the 1960s most couples wanted to sample marriage.
She said some people describe this form of cohabitation as "Let's have a little marriage and then we'll be ready for the big marriage."
Cohabiting couples range from those who live together for utilitarian reasons, such as shared salaries and tax breaks, to those who no longer believe in the institution of marriage.
Some couples who intend to get married see nothing wrong with moving in together. Professor Kopp said these couples reason that living together before they marry will help them past the slump married couples often experience.
Professor Duff said, "For most American couples, relationships last between two months and six years, and then they either marry or break up. So it seems like for most couples in the United States, [cohabitation] is a trial marriage."
He described a recent development in which women initiate cohabitation because they want to see if a man will follow through on his promises and help maintain the household.
Katrina Turner said of her cohabitation experience, "When you live together, you do see what you are going to get when you marry. There are still a lot of trust issues because you aren't committed."
Professor Kopp said other couples live together for sexual pleasure and don't intend to ever marry. "A mark of our culture today is that we have taken the relationship out of sex," she said.
According to Professor Duff, some people use cohabitation as an alternative to marriage. "Something like 20 percent of couples who cohabit at any particular time have cohabited for more than five years," he said.
Ms. Turner and Mr. Genco have cohabited for six years.
Early on in their relationship, their choice to cohabit became a divisive issue in Ms. Turner's family. "My family is against us living together," Ms. Turner said. "I think my Mom was embarrassed, and my Dad didn't want to see his little girl living with a boy."
Ms. Turner wants to get married. "I wish we would have gotten married a long time ago," she said. "But there really isn't anything different in our situation now, except maybe our names on the checking account."
She said they will get married once they decide to have children. "Right now we are enjoying each other and spoiling ourselves and preparing for a big wedding and a family," she said.
Focus on the Family's web-site, Citizen Link, reported that 40 percent of marriages among couples who first cohabit end in divorce after 10 years.
Professor Duff said, "All the research now is clear that people who do cohabit are more likely to get divorced, although the issue about why is somewhat confusing." He said that the people who would cohabit are more liberal, less religious and less likely to remain committed to a difficult relationship.
In a research paper published in
1998 on Focus on the Family's web
page, Glenn Stanton concluded, "The idea that cohabitation serves as an effective testing ground for marriage has no basis in fact."
He reported findings that cohabiting couples have less healthy relationships than do married couples.
Professor Kopp said cohabitation is a socially acceptable way for people to meet their own needs. However, she pointed out that the lack of commitment in cohabitation prevents people from experiencing the deep relationships for which God created them.
"We want people to love us through thick and thin," she said, "when our hair falls out and our teeth fall out, and when they see the reality of who we are."
The lack of commitment between two cohabiting people also causes their children to suffer from insecurity and a damaged self-identity, Professor Kopp said.
Furthermore, she said the children of cohabiting parents have limited legal recourse if their parents separate. Neither parent needs to pay alimony, for example, or contribute toward the child's higher education.
"We have a new generation of
young people who have been deeply wounded," Professor Kopp said. "This is a real opportunity for young people to see God as a loving Father, able to identify with the hurt and pain of our world."
Jerry Gramckow, who works with Focus on the Family's abstinence program, said the church "needs to teach and uphold the basics of who God is and why; because of His inherent holiness, we, too, must be holy."
Professor Kopp identified cohabitation as people's attempt to meet their own needs outside of God. "Marriage is one of the first things God created," she said. "When it breaks down, society breaks down."
She said Christians are partly to blame because they have not held to the importance of the marriage covenant.
Mr. Gramckow said the church needs to recognize that some people choose to cohabit because they have witnessed less-than-happy marriages. "Older married couples need to culti-vate strong, joyous marriages," he said, "the kind of committed relationships younger believers will want to follow."
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