Civic Engagement, Adulthood

COHABITATION Cohabitation is defined by social scientists as two adults of the opposite sex living together in an intimate, nonmarital relationship. Cohabitation has rapidly become a prominent feature on the landscape of American family life. Using the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), Kennedy and Bumpass (2007) estimated that 58% of women aged between 25 and 29 had cohabited at some point in their lives. Moreover, about 40% of children in the United States will spend some part of their childhood in a cohabiting household (Kennedy & Bumpass, 2007). Young people in the United States approve of cohabitation at much higher rates than their older counterparts, so it is likely that cohabitation rates will continue to rise in the United States (Smock, 2000). In attempting to understand the causes and consequences of the rise in cohabitation, scholars have tried to identify whether cohabitation is an alternative to marriage, a prelude to marriage, or a convenient dating arrangement. Clearly all three forms of cohabitation exist, but most agree that the most common form, at least among young adults, is as a prelude to marriage. However, consensus is growing that cohabitation is still an incomplete institution in the United States with wide variations in the meanings and norms associated with it.