Shared Beliefs and the Union Stability of Married and Cohabiting Couples

Cohabiting couples and couples who cohabit prior to marriage have less stable relationships than married couples who did not cohabit, and these differences in stability may be linked to different processes within the relationships. This research examines the similarity of partners' beliefs about the division of household labor using the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 1,039), finding that couples who do not share beliefs about the division of household labor are more likely to end their union. Cohabiting couples have a particularly high likelihood of ending the union when the two partners hold widely divergent views about whether housework should be shared, suggesting that cohabiting and married couples may have different responses to dissimilarity between the partners. Key Words: union dissolution, cohabitation, marriage, similarity, consensus, division of labor. Couples who cohabit may experience their relationship differently than married couples who have not cohabited. Cohabitors tend to have more egalitarian relationships, as well as less stable ones, than do married couples. These differences may also extend to the ways in which couples experience their shared expectations for the relationship. Although there is some indication that shared expectations affect marriage, little investigation has explored whether cohabitors are also influenced by their shared expectations. This research examines the effects of shared beliefs about the division of household labor on the stability of couples who are cohabiting, who cohabited prior to marriage, and who married without having cohabited with one another. Traditionalism and Cohabitation Overall, cohabiting couples appear to be less traditional than married couples. This is evident in the partnerships that cohabitors form, as well as in their expectations for the relationship. The partnerships of cohabitors tend to be more heterogeneous than those of married couples, for both age and race (Qian, 1998; Qian & Preston, 1993; Schoen & Weinick, 1993). Cohabiting couples are also less likely than married couples to have children living with them, although between one third and one half of cohabiting households do contain children (Bumpass, Sweet, & Cherlin, 1991). Beliefs and expectations about the relationship are more nontraditional among cohabitors than married couples (Lillard, Brien, & Waite, 1995), with cohabitors less likely to intend to bear children or to buy a home than married couples (Rindfuss & VandenHeuvel, 1990). Marriage itself may be less essential for cohabitors, evidenced by the one third of partners in cohabiting unions where one or both partners do not intend to marry (Brown & Booth, 1996; Bumpass et al., 1991; Sanchez, Manning, & Smock, 1998). Cohabitors also tend to be more open to the possibility of divorce (Axinn & Thornton, 1992). Indeed, these nontraditional beliefs do appear to leave cohabitors less committed to the institution of marriage. Relationships of cohabitors are more unstable than those of married couples (Bumpass & Lu, 2000). Further, cohabitors who marry have higher rates of divorce than couples who marry without cohabiting with one another (see Smock, 2000, for a review). Nontraditional beliefs also extend to gendered interactions between the partners. Individuals who cohabit hold beliefs about the division of household labor that are more egalitarian than those of married couples (Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, & Waite, 1995; Lye & Waldron, 1997). This means that cohabiting couples tend to establish their relationship on the principle of gender equality, whereas married couples base their relationship on a more traditional gendered division of labor (Brines & Joyner, 1999). Married and cohabiting couples may thus deal very differently with issues pertaining to the gendered division of household labor and specifically to the problem of partners who do not share expectations about the division of household labor. …