ADF Alliance Alert

Jennifer Roback Morse has forwarded an email that indicates: ”The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University did a thorough study of the literature, that was current as of 2002. Their conclusion: ‘No positive contribution of cohabitation to marriage has ever been found.’ Couples who cohabit before marriage have a higher probability of divorce that couples who don’t. That’s because: people make poorer choices about partners when they move in than when they marry; they attach to their partners whether they are good for them or not; and cohabiting couples learn a whole lot of habits that are destructive to marriage, that they have to unlearn once they get married.”

The Rutgers University Study here: What Young Adults Need to Know about Cohabitation before Marriage: A Comprehensive View of Recent Research

Read Jennifer Roback’s article at the Ruth Institute, Why Not Take Her for a Test Drive?, where she identifies these fast facts:

• Cohabitors are more likely to be depressed than married couples.
• The presence of children exacerbates depression among cohabitors, but not among married couples.
• Cohabiting couples perceive their relationships as less stable.
• Cohabitors report poorer relationship quality than married couples.
• Cohabiting women are more likely to have “secondary sex partners” than are married women.
• Cohabitors have lower commitment to the relationship, lower levels of happiness and worse relationships with their parents than married couples.
• Cohabiting couples have higher rates of assault, and the violence is more severe, than among dating or married couples.
• Cohabitors tend to be more socially isolated and this partially explains their heightened levels of domestic violence.
• Prior cohabitants had a higher rate of pre-marital aggression than couples who did not live together.
• According to a study of British child abuse registries, a cohabiting boyfriend is the most serious risk factor for child abuse. Children are safest living with their natural parents, married to each other, next safest living with their mother and her new husband, next safest living with their natural mother alone, still less safe with two natural parents cohabiting and the least safe with their mother and a cohabiting, but unrelated boyfriend.
• Married couples whose marriages are preceded by cohabitation are more likely to get divorced and to report lower quality marriages.
• The increased probability of divorce cannot be accounted for by systematic differences between those who choose to get married and those who choose to cohabit.