Unmarried Cohabitation: Options, Limits and Possibilities

Abstract

SynopsisUsing data from Australian and overseas longitudinal studies extending over a quarter of a century, this paper (a) explores the construction and ideological Justification of liberation and the social and ideological contexts with which liberation is usually connected; (b) examines the views of cohabiting couples and marrieds with and without cohabital experience; and (b) evaluates the extent to which liberation constitutes an element of modem cohabitation. It finally addresses the question about who benefited from the cohabital experience: the cohabiting couple, marriage as an institution or the state. The paper concludes that conditioning, structural and ideological changes and legal reforms, which were introduced recently in the various Australian states, have transformed cohabitation from an alternative to matrimony to a preparation step to marriage, and have significantly reduced every chance to construct a liberated dyadic life style. Consequently, for the liberated Australians who wish to es...