Attitudes, Values, and Entrance into Cohabitational versus Marital Unions

Abstract

This article argues that marriage and cohabitation are associated with important differences in work patterns, earnings, treatment of money, use of leisure time, social relations with the extended family, the division of household labor, and fertility. We hypothesize that these differences lead those considering the formation of a household to consider their attitudes toward these aspects of life, which appear to be so different in marriage from those in cohabitation. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, we test and find support for the hypothesis that the choice between cohabitation and marriage is affected by attitudes and values toward work, family, use of leisure time, money, and sex roles, as well as values and attitudes toward marriage itself Cohabitation is now an important form of union formation in the U.S. Recent estimates suggest that about 35% of those born in the early 1960s will live with someone of the opposite sex before age 25 compared to less than 8% of those born in the early 1940s (Bumpass & Sweet 1989). Although cohabitation is now unexceptional, key questions remain about why some who form households establish cohabitational unions while others marry. This article argues that the choice between marriage and cohabitation impinges on a wide range of activities, circumstances, and social relations. These most obviously include procreation and relations between cohabitants or spouses, but we argue that they also comprise relations with extended family, leisure pursuits, employment, division of economic resources, and division of household labor. Cohabiting may allow individuals or couples who feel unready for the demands of marriage to delay the assumption of marital roles but to acquire the benefits