Effect of Cohabitation on Marriage Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Effect of Cohabitation on Marriage - Essay Example A number of evidences support these arguments for cohabitation and they were promptly included. Formal marriage is the traditional form of union in the United States, and certainly the most common. This trend, however, is slowly being displaced as more and more adults enter into informal cohabitational unions. (Brown et al. 2005, p. 3) A number of research has shown that these cohabitational relationships are formed initially, lasting with a half-life of only about one year and the majority of the unions proceeding to marriages. (Laumann et al., p. 205) With this initial fact, the aim of this paper is to argue that cohabitation for adults have good effects on marriage, improving the odds for the eventual happy relationship which could lead to a lower risk of divorce. Fundamentally, I believe that premarital cohabitation is a good preparation for marriage before entering into a lifelong contract and acquiring shared responsibility of parenting. The main advantage of premarital cohabitation is that it allows couples to learn more about each other, particularly about ones habits and idiosyncrasies and hence, mature in their relationship. According to Janell Caroll (2009), this setup allows partners to smoothen the rough spots in their relationship and see whether they would be able to take their relationship to the next level. (p. 224) In this context, one sees that cohabitation is a transitional stage – one that is between the stage of being single and marriage. It allows partners to have intimate co-residential union and other similarities to married life without the social and legal contract that bind marriage. It recognizes, wrote Thornton, Axinn and, Xie (2007), the contemporary norms about sex and living arrangements in America and provide an alternative for a single man and woman who find themselves in love and wanting to share each other’s lives more fully before marriage by starting to