Posted on: Thursday, July 11, 2002
Cohabitation can detour a wedding, research says
By Karen S. Peterson
USA Today
An expert addressing a "Smart Marriages" conference this week will drop research on his colleagues that may indeed make some Americans smart.
Researcher Scott Stanley's case is this: Women living unmarried with guys and expecting a lasting, committed marriage down the line had better review their options.
His research finds that men who cohabit with the women they eventually marry are less committed to the union than men who never lived with their spouses ahead of time.
A variety of such studies will be presented beginning today at the Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education.
Rather than settle anything for the more than 5 million unmarried American couples who live together, the research will likely spark the ongoing dispute over living together vs. marriage, and true commitment vs. a spirit of "maybe I do," in Stanley's words.
It will also raise fresh questions about who's more of a slacker in the commitment department: men or women.
Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, says the evidence from his research is so strong that cohabiting women "should be very careful about how aligned they are with a particular man if he does not show any strong sense of marriage and a future together."
Men who either drift into marriage "through inertia" following a cohabiting arrangement or who are "dragged down the aisle" by women who finally put their feet down are not good marriage risks, he says.
Many presenters will agree with Stanley: It is young men, not women, who move toward marriage with the speed of a wounded sloth. Their findings will reinforce stereotypes and infuriate many of both sexes who want to look before they leap.
But still, it is men, these researchers say, who drag their feet — big time.
Stanley says his results do not mean there are not "a lot of super men out there," who have cohabited and are dedicated to their women both before and after heading down the aisle. But his findings do hold up on average, he says, and are reinforced by another of his current research projects.
The cohabiting women in Stanley's small but pioneering study did not show differences in commitment to their unions before or after marriage.
He speculates that men who want "to test marriage out first" are less committed to the institution in general and their partners specifically than men who move directly to marriage without cohabiting.
And he speculates that women are still socialized to put relationships first and tend to be as committed to both the union and the partner after marriage as they were before it.
His findings will interest those who monitor marriage trends. Setting up shop together — before marriage or without any plans to marry — has become commonplace. Between 50 percent and 60 percent of new marriages now involve couples who have lived together first.
Many who live together feel it is a vaccination against divorce.
"I've been dating the same girl for three years, and it just seemed the natural progression for our relationship, the next step to take," says Scott Tolchinsky, 23, of Bethesda, Md., who has just set up housekeeping with his girlfriend. "You see so many get divorced that you want to try things out."
Divorce is "just a huge issue for my generation," says Rosanne Garfield, 28, of Arlington, Va. "My family has not had good success with marriage. I was living with my boyfriend for the last year. I told him to make a decision (about marriage), and that ended it. But it would never cross my mind not to live together with someone before marrying him."
Ironically, the divorce rate among those who once lived together is higher than among those who have not.
Experts say that is often because those who choose to cohabit are not great believers in marriage in the first place.
Stanley sees other factors at play. In his study on live-ins who married, less religious men were particularly apt to be less committed to partners.
It may be that higher divorce rates among one-time cohabitors are due to "the presence of males who are less dedicated, less religious and more negative" than males who didn't cohabit, he says.
His present study is based on a sub-sample of 207 men and women married 10 years or less and culled from ongoing marital research on 950 adults nationwide. Standard assessments of commitment were employed during telephone interviews. Much of his center's work is financed by the National Institute of Mental Health. His study will be published in a future issue of the Journal of Family Issues.
Stanley says his results dovetail with those from a controversial Rutgers University study released June 25.
That research by sociologist David Popenoe, who will elaborate further on his findings at the "Smart Marriages" conference, found that young men are reluctant to marry because just living with a woman is easier. They fear the cost of a divorce. They are not excited about sharing the everyday chores of parenting with their future wives. And they'd like to be financially stable first.
Both he and Popenoe agree, Stanley says, that "it is a bigger switch for men than women to go from being nonmarried to married. And men are more reluctant to throw that switch."
Women, Stanley says, are more willing to sacrifice for others, more willing to undergo the burdens that babies bring. And women's fertile years are limited. They hear their biological clocks ticking, while men hear only the sounds of silence.
