The Rise of Cohabitation
On August 16th, 2011, the 3rd edition, in their Why Marriage Matters (a joint publication of The National Marriage Project and The Center for Marriage and Families) was released. This report subtitled, “Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” puts most of its focus on the issue of cohabitation. The report starts with a startling observation:
Today, the rise of cohabiting households with children is the largest unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children’s family lives.
The report explains that cohabitation has seen an unprecedented fourteen-fold increase since 1970. A child today is more likely to spend time in a cohabiting household than experience their parents’ divorce as reflected in the following chart:
