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NEW OXFORD REVIEW
September 2007
Cohabitation: Ten Facts
By A. Patrick Schneider II
A. Patrick Schneider II, M.D., M.P.H., who holds boards in family
and geriatric medicine and who received a Masters in Public Health
from Harvard University, is in private practice in Lexington,
Kentucky.
 "Cohabitation
-- it's training for divorce." -- Chuck Colson (1995)
1. Cohabitation is growing: 35 to 40
years ago cohabitation was rare; it was socially taboo. Growth by
decade was: 1960s (up 19 percent), 1970s (up 204 percent), 1980s (up
80 percent), 1990s (up 66 percent), but up only 7.7 percent between
2000 and 2004. All told, cohabitation is up eleven-fold (U.S. Census
Bureau, "Unmarried-Couple Households, by Presence of Children: 1960
to Present," Table UC-1, June 12, 2003).
2. Relationships are unstable: One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay
together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more
years (Bennett, W.J., The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral
Collapse of the American Family, 2001).
3. Greater risk of divorce: The rate of divorce among those who
cohabit prior to marriage is nearly double (39 percent vs. 21
percent) that of couples who marry without prior cohabitation
(ibid.).
4. Women suffer disproportionately: Cohabiting women often end up
with the responsibilities of marriage -- particularly when it comes
to caring for children -- without the legal protection (ibid.),
while contributing more than 70 percent of the relationship's income
(Crouse, J.C., "Cohabitation: Consequences for Mothers and
Children," presentation at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Oct. 11-14, 2004,
U.N. Tenth Anniversary of the International Year of the Family).
5. Greater risk of STD: Men in cohabiting relationships are four
times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands (ibid.). In 1960
there were only three STDs; now there are two dozen that are
incurable. Cases of STD have tripled in the past six years. The
rate of STD among cohabiting couples is six times higher than
among married women (Crouse, J.C., Gaining Ground: A Profile of
American Women in the Twentieth Century, 2000).
6. Greater risk of substance abuse and psychiatric problems: A UCLA
survey of 130 published studies found that marriages preceded by
cohabitation were more prone to drug and alcohol problems (Coombs,
R.H., "Marital Status and Personal Well-Being: A Literature Review,"
Family Relations, Jan. 1991). Depression is three times more
likely in cohabiting couples than among married couples (Robbins,
L., Rieger, D., Psychiatric Disorders in America, 1990).
7. Higher poverty rates: Cohabitors who never marry have 78 percent
less wealth than the continuously married; cohabitors who have been
divorced or widowed once have 68 percent less wealth (Cohabitation
Facts website).
8. Children suffer: The poverty rate among children of cohabiting
couples is five fold greater than the rate among children in
married-couple households (Bennett, op. cit.). Compared to
children of married biological parents, children age 12-17 with
cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional
and behavioral problems (Booth, A., Crouter, A.C., eds., Just
Living Together: Implications of Cohabitation on Families, Children
and Social Policy, 2002). Likewise, adolescents from cohabiting
households are 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school
and 90 percent more likely to have a low GPA (Manning, W.D., Lamb,
K.A., "Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married and
Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family, Nov.
2003). Children find themselves without grandparents, aunts, uncles,
and cousins; the family tree is pruned (Bennett, op. cit.).
9. Society pays: The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the
world, with two million souls in federal and state prisons and local
jails. In 1980 the figure was just over 500,000 (Bennett, op. cit.).
Seventy percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions are from
fatherless homes (Drake, T., "The Father Factor: Crime on Increase
in ‘Dad Free' Zones," National Catholic Register, Jan. 2007).
Three-fourths of children involved in criminal activity were from
cohabiting households (Crouse, op. cit.).
10. Cohabitation breeds abuse, violence, and murder: Abuse of
children: Rates of serious abuse are lowest in intact families; six
times higher in stepfamilies; 14 times higher in
always-single-mother families; 20 times higher in cohabiting
biological-parent families; and 33 times higher when the
mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend who is not the biological
father (Crouse, op. cit.). Abuse of women: Compared to a married
woman, a cohabiting woman is three times more likely to experience
physical aggression (Salari, S.M., Baldwin, B.M., "Verbal, Physical,
and Injurious Aggression Among Intimate Couples Over Time,"
Journal of Family Issues, May 2002), and nine times more likely
to be murdered (Shackelford, T.K., "Cohabitation, Marriage, and
Murder: Woman-Killing by Male Romantic Partners," Aggressive
Behavior, vol. 27, 2001). This data is consistent with similar
data on children.
Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for
children. It is a deadly toxin to marriage, family, and culture.
With great insight and wisdom Pope Benedict XVI has recently written
in Sacramentum Caritatis (March 13, 2007) that among the four
"fundamental values" that are "not negotiable," second only to
respect for human life is "the family built upon marriage between a
man and a woman."
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