Arielle Kuperberg, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, claims that her findings in a study on premarital cohabitation debunk 30 years of research. According to Kuperberg, her study shows that couples who cohabit before they marry are no more likely to divorce that anyone else.
Since the 1960s, there has been a 900 percent increase in cohabitation globally. Many people believe that not living together before marriage is a huge mistake, yet there is still no clear evidence that cohabitation has been helpful in creating family stability.
It is a huge deal to claim you have debunked decades worth of study with one piece of research. Scott Stanley at the University of Denver and others have been conducting research on this issue for many years. In his blog, slidingvsdeciding.com, Stanley does an excellent job of breaking down many of the myths surrounding cohabitation and marriage.
“At the heart of it, Kuperberg asserts that scores of researchers have had it wrong for decades, and that maybe there never has been an association between cohabiting and marriage and divorce,” Stanley writes in a recent post. “She asserts that what was misunderstood all these years is that cohabiters are more likely to divorce, not because they cohabited, but because they tended to start living together when they were too young to either be making a wise choice in a mate or to take on the roles of marriage. This logic is akin to the well-replicated, robust finding that marrying young is associated with greater odds of divorce. Given that, why wouldn’t moving in together at a young age also be a problem?”
Great question.