A Bad Start?

By NADYA LABI

Grandma warned about "living in sin." Ladies in her day had to be delicate about such matters, but with a voice full of foreboding she'd offer these words to the wise: "He's never going to buy the cow if he can get the milk for free." The cow, of course, was the one-carat rock, the white picket fence, the happily ever after.

Grandma now has support from an unlikely quarter--academe. According to a controversial report released by the National Marriage Project, a group committed to "revitalizing marriage," based at Rutgers University in New Jersey, cohabiting couples are more likely to experience a host of domestic problems--including, if they finally get married, divorce. "Cohabiting unions tend to weaken the institution of marriage and pose clear and present dangers for women and children," states the report, which culled the results of recent studies on nonmarital cohabitation as well as--yikes!--that tome of scholarly erudition, The Rules.

Last year in the U.S., more than 4 million unmarried heterosexual couples shacked up, in contrast to only half a million at the end of the supposedly free-spirited '60s. Though living together has become conventional, the report cites studies showing that these unions, in comparison to marriages, tend to have more episodes of domestic violence to women and physical and sexual abuse of children. It notes that annual rates of depression among unmarried couples are more than three times those of married couples.

Most surprising, perhaps, for many Gen-Xers, who think living together is a prudent rehearsal for "I do," the report contends that cohabitation reduces the likelihood of later wedded bliss. It quotes a 1992 study of 3,300 adults showing that those who had lived with a partner were 46% more likely to divorce than those who had not. "The longer you cohabit, the more tolerant you are of divorce," says David Popenoe, the sociologist who co-wrote the study. "You're used to living in a low-commitment relationship, and it's hard to shift that kind of mental pattern."

Does cohabitation really make divorce more likely? Or are the people who cohabit simply the same sort of people who tend to divorce? A devoutly Roman Catholic couple, for example, might skip living together and go straight into a long-running marriage, while a couple who at the outset are doubtful of marriage might live together first before trying a marriage that fails. "It is inappropriate and simplistic to treat cohabitation as the major factor affecting divorce," says Larry Bumpass, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin. "The trend in divorce stretches back over the last hundred years, so clearly it wasn't caused by cohabitation." Indeed, cohabitation may have helped stall the rising divorce rate by weeding out unstable relationships. So, Grandma, don't gloat just yet.

--By Nadya Labi