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Marital vs Cohabitation Stability

"The research provides many negative consequences of parental cohabitation for children. The opposite occurs for children whose parents are married… The conclusion from these various reviews is that children benefit unequivocally from their parents’ marriage."

~Dr. Anne-Marie Ambert, Marriage & Cohabitation, the Vanier Institute of the Family.~

Marital vs Cohabitation Stability

The Signal Hill Numerous world-wide studies indicate that cohabitations are not as stable as marriages.

It was found in a study by the Canadian General Social Survey that, of women aged 20 to 30 years, 63% whose first relationship had been cohabitational had separated by 1995 compared to 33% of women who had married first.(1)
Fifty-five percent of Quebec women and 66% of women in the other provinces aged 30 to 39 who opted for cohabitation as a first union will go through a separation.(2) Compare these rates of separation to the 30% or so of divorce after five years of marriage that occurs in Canada. These patterns are seen in most western societies.(3)
Cohabitations tend to dissolve more rapidly than marriages. More than 50% of these unions end in dissolution within five years.(4)
Women suffer disproportionately: Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage -- particularly when it comes to caring for children -- without the legal protection they would have had from marriage,(5) while contributing more than 70% of the relationship's income.(6)
Couples who cohabitate are less likely to eventually marry. In the 1970s, about 60% of cohabitors went on to marry their partner within three years of living together. This compares to only about 35% in the early 1990s.(7)
The rate of STDs among cohabiting couples is six times higher than among married women. (8)

Fidelity

Cohabitors are less faithful to their partners sexually as indicated in the table below.(9) This large and representative survey of men and women reported at least one instance of sexuality outside their marriage or cohabitation in the past year:

Husbands	11%
Wives	9
Male cohabitors	25
Female cohabitors	22

Footnotes:

1. Le Bourdais, C., Neil, G., Turcotte, P., et al. 2000a. The changing face of conjugal relationship. Canadian Social Trends, 56, 14-17

2. Turcotte, P. 2002. Changing conjugal life in Canada. The Daily, Statistics Canada, July 11

3. Ambert A.M., 2005, Cohabitation & Marriage: How are they related? Contemporary Family Trends, The Vanier Institute of the Family, Ottawa

4. Milan, A. 2000. One hundred years of families. Canadian Social Trends, 56, 2-12

5. Bennett, W.J., The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family, 2001

6. Crouse, J.C., "Cohabitation: Consequences for Mothers and Children," presentation at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Oct. 11-14, 2004, U.N. Tenth Anniversary of the International Year of the Family

7. Bumpass, L.L. 1998. The changing significance of marriage in the United States. In K.O. Mason et al. (Eds.), The changing family in comparative perspective: Asia and the United States (pp. 63-79). Honolulu, HI: East-West Centre

8. Crouse, J.C., Gaining Ground: A Profile of American Women in the Twentieth Century, 2000

9. Blumstein, P., and Schwartz, P. 1990. Intimate relationships and the creation of sexuality. In D. McWhirter, S. Sanders, and J. Reinisch (Eds.), Homosexuality/heterosexuality: Concepts of sexual orientation (pp. 96-109). New York: Oxford University Press

Marital vs Cohabitation Stability

Cohabitation & Children

Benefits of Marriage

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Marital vs Cohabitation Stability

Fidelity