Cohabitation in the United States and Britain: Demography, kinship, and the future

Cohabitation is a rapidly changing aspect of family life in the United States and Britain. This article describes the demography of cohabitation, considers the place of cohabitation in the kinship system, and speculates on the future of cohabitation. I argue that three processes-cohort replacement, socialization that occurs when children live with cohabiting parents, and social diffusion-will foster continued increases in rates of cohabitation. These processes are also likely to increase variation in the types of cohabiting relationships that couples form. Understanding the meaning of cohabitation in the kinship system requires distinguishing between individuals' attitudes about their own relationships and the composition of cohabiting unions at the population level. Key Words: cohabitation, family change, kinship, marriage. Academics frequently present papers that they have already written. It is less common to write a paper after it has been presented. This article was originally prepared as one of three presentations for the plenary session "Cohabitation and Marriage in Western Countries" at the 2003 conference of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). The session was on the last day of the conference, and many conference participants had already attended a series of sessions on marriage and cohabitation. It is not possible for a written presentation to capture the excitement and taken-for-granted knowledge that this continuing conversation provided. This JMF symposium, however, provides a valuable opportunity to move the debates about marriage and cohabitation forward by recombining presentations and commentary in ways not possible at the NCFR conference. I thank Paul Amato, who organized the conference, and Alexis Walker, who organized this symposium, for providing these forums. A goal of our session was to address three questions about heterosexual cohabitation in different Western countries to provide insight into variation in the causes and consequences of cohabitation in different institutional settings. My remarks emphasize cohabitation in the United States, the setting I know better, but I highlight similarities between cohabitation in the United States and Britain. Family researchers have a history of using data from British studies to inform an understanding of family processes in the United States (e.g., Cherlin et al., 1991) because aspects of the social context in both countries are similar. Comparative studies of cohabitation also group the United States with Britain (Kiernan, 2002). In addition to these similarities, there are intriguing differences between the two settings, such as the greater racial and ethnic diversity in U.S. family patterns. I believe that these differences provide insights into the meaning of cohabitation. I address the three broad questions that motivated our plenary session. As in many standardized tests, the questions progress in degree of difficulty: 1. What is the demography of cohabitation? 2. What is the place of cohabitation in the kinship system? Is it a courtship stage or an alternative to marriage? 3. What is the future of cohabitation? DEMOGRAPHY OF COHABITATION One reason that the question about the demography of cohabitation is easier to answer than the other questions is that the past several decades have seen an explosion of rich new data on cohabiting unions. I use evidence from others' research to describe levels, trends, and differentials in cohabitation; the stability of cohabiting unions; and the relationship between cohabiting and childbearing (for more complete reviews, see Seltzer, 2004, and Smock, 2000). Levels and Trends Today, nearly 4.6 million U.S. households are maintained by heterosexual cohabiting couples (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004, Table QT-P18), reflecting a dramatic increase over the past 40 years. Figure 1 shows that in 1960, there were just over 0.4 million cohabiting couples. …