According to the study, about two thirds of those in their 20's believe that living together before marriage is a good way to avoid divorce. Many believe that you need to live together before marriage to see if you'll get along with each other. Turns out ... it isn't true. In 1960 some 450,000 couples lived together without the benefit of marriage. Today it's over 7.5 million. And, as it turns out, there is something researchers call "the cohabitation effect". Cohabiting couples who marry tend to be less satisfied in their marriages and more prone to divorce. It seems, then, that the efforts of the past 50 years to decrease the divorce rate have caused an increase in divorce rates.
The problem, of course, is multifaceted. There is the difference between men and women. Typically women tend to engage in sex as a step toward marriage and men see it more like a test. Women see it as a step toward commitment and men see it as a good reason to postpone commitment. Then there is the whole commitment problem. As cohabitors, there is no real commitment. The follow-on commitment that marriage brings erases that and this is a whole new ballgame. When we date, we are on our best behavior because we know we need to impress, but when we marry, that changes, doesn't it? Normal behavior. Not good, but normal.
Interesting tidbit from a recent report from the CDC.
Foreign-born Hispanic women had a higher probability of marrying for the first time by age 25 than U.S.-born Hispanic women. Similarly, foreign-born Hispanic women and men had higher probabilities of their first marriage lasting up to 20 years duration compared with U.S.-born Hispanic women and men.Is it possible that American values (rather than race, for instance) are what is driving marriage rates lower and divorce rates higher? I'm just asking.
From a recent Pew Research report on The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of New Families, in 1969 68% believed that premarital sex was wrong. In 2009, 60% believed it was not wrong and 32% believed it was. "Family" is now defined as just about anything at all. Obviously a married couple with children were defined by 99% as "family", but 43% defined an unmarried couple without children as "family" as well. It would appear that "family" is defined as "more than one person together". A staggering statistic was the share of births to unmarried women by race and ethnicity. Overall, 41% of children born in America are born to unmarried mothers. For whites, it is 29%. For hispanics it is 53%. For blacks it is a phenomenal 72%. Another trendline is the comparison of married to unmarried living together. In 1960, 72% of respondents had been married while 15% never had. In 2008, only 52% of respondents had been married while 27% never had.
I've complained for years about changing terminology. Really it's a change in values. Our values are not getting more solid. They're declining. But as Dr. Meg Jay points out, it isn't a good thing. It isn't improving marriage. It's erasing it. It appears that God's idea was a better one. "Did God say ...?" Yes, yes He did. We're just not listening.
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