Ten Facts reveal it
is a deadly toxin to marriage, family, and culture
By A. Patrick Schneider II
October 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A. Patrick Schneider II, M.D., M.P.H., who
holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and who received a Masters in
Public Health from Harvard University, is in private practice in Lexington,
Kentucky.
"Cohabitation -- it's training for divorce." -- Chuck Colson
(1995)
1. Cohabitation is growing: 35 to 40 years ago cohabitation was rare; it
was socially taboo. Growth by decade was: 1960s (up 19 percent), 1970s (up 204
percent), 1980s (up 80 percent), 1990s (up 66 percent), but up only 7.7 percent
between 2000 and 2004. All told, cohabitation is up eleven-fold (U.S. Census
Bureau, "Unmarried-Couple Households, by Presence of Children: 1960 to
Present," Table UC-1, June 12, 2003).
2. Relationships are unstable: One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay
together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years (Bennett,
W.J., The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American
Family, 2001).
3. Greater risk of divorce: The rate of divorce among those who cohabit
prior to marriage is nearly double (39 percent vs. 21 percent) that of couples
who marry without prior cohabitation (ibid.).
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 (ibid.), while contributing more than
70 percent of the relationship's income (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).
5. Greater risk of STD: Men in cohabiting relationships are four times
more likely to be unfaithful than husbands (ibid.). In 1960 there were only
three STDs; now there are two dozen that are incurable. Cases of STD have
tripled in the past six years. The rate of STD among cohabiting couples is six
times higher than among married women (Crouse, J.C., Gaining Ground: A
Profile of American Women in the Twentieth Century, 2000).
6. Greater risk of substance abuse and psychiatric problems: A UCLA
survey of 130 published studies found that marriages preceded by cohabitation
were more prone to drug and alcohol problems (Coombs, R.H., "Marital
Status and Personal Well-Being: A Literature Review," Family
Relations, Jan. 1991). Depression is three times more likely in cohabiting
couples than among married couples (Robbins, L., Rieger, D., Psychiatric
Disorders in America, 1990).
7. Higher poverty rates: Cohabitors who never marry have 78 percent less
wealth than the continuously married; cohabitors who have been divorced or
widowed once have 68 percent less wealth (Cohabitation Facts website).
8. Children suffer: The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples
is five fold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households
(Bennett, op. cit.). Compared to children of married biological parents,
children age 12-17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit
emotional and behavioral problems (Booth, A., Crouter, A.C., eds., Just
Living Together: Implications of Cohabitation on Families, Children and Social
Policy, 2002). Likewise, adolescents from cohabiting households are 122
percent more likely to be expelled from school and 90 percent more likely to
have a low GPA (Manning, W.D., Lamb, K.A., "Adolescent Well-Being in
Cohabiting, Married and Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage
and Family, Nov. 2003). Children find themselves without grandparents, aunts,
uncles, and cousins; the family tree is pruned (Bennett, op. cit.).
9. Society pays: The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the
world, with two million souls in federal and state prisons and local jails. In
1980 the figure was just over 500,000 (Bennett, op. cit.). Seventy percent of
juveniles in state-operated institutions are from fatherless homes (Drake, T.,
"The Father Factor: Crime on Increase in ‘Dad Free' Zones,"
National Catholic Register, Jan. 2007). Three-fourths of children involved in
criminal activity were from cohabiting households (Crouse, op. cit.).
10. Cohabitation breeds abuse, violence, and murder: Abuse of children:
Rates of serious abuse are lowest in intact families; six times higher in stepfamilies;
14 times higher in always-single-mother families; 20 times higher in cohabiting
biological-parent families; and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabiting
with a boyfriend who is not the biological father (Crouse, op. cit.). Abuse of
women: Compared to a married woman, a cohabiting woman is three times more
likely to experience physical aggression (Salari, S.M., Baldwin, B.M., "Verbal,
Physical, and Injurious Aggression Among Intimate Couples Over Time,"
Journal of Family Issues, May 2002), and nine times more likely to be murdered
(Shackelford, T.K., "Cohabitation, Marriage, and Murder: Woman-Killing
by Male Romantic Partners," Aggressive Behavior, vol. 27, 2001). This
data is consistent with similar data on children.
Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children. It is
a deadly toxin to marriage, family, and culture. With great insight and wisdom
Pope Benedict XVI has recently written in Sacramentum Caritatis (March
13, 2007) that among the four "fundamental values" that are "not
negotiable," second only to respect for human life is "the family
built upon marriage between a man and a woman."