Family law (2023): Marriage and other unions and status: Cohabitation (Part One)

Cohabitation is an arrangement where people who are not married, usually couples, live together. They are often involved in a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. Such arrangements have become increasingly common in Western countries since the late 20th century, being led by changing social views, especially regarding marriage, gender roles and religion.

More broadly, the term cohabitation can mean any number of people living together. To "cohabit", in a broad sense, means to "coexist". The origin of the term comes from the mid 16th century, from the Latin cohabitare, from co- 'together' + habitare 'dwell'.

Social changes leading to increase.

In Europe, the Scandinavian countries have been the first to start this leading trend, although many countries have since followed. Mediterranean Europe has traditionally been very conservative, with religion playing a strong role. Until the mid-1990s, cohabitation levels remained low in this region, but have since increased.

During the past decades, in Western countries, there has been an increase in unmarried couples cohabiting. Historically, many Western countries have been influenced by Christian doctrines on sex, which opposes unmarried cohabitation. As social norms have changed, such beliefs have become less widely held by the population and some Christian denominations today view cohabitation as a precursor to marriage. Pope Francis has married a cohabiting couple who had children, while former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of York John Sentamu have expressed tolerance of cohabitation.

In recent decades high rates of participation of women in the workforce, and the widespread availability of highly effective long acting reversible contraceptives has led to women making individual choices over their reproduction with decreased reliance on male partners for financial stability. All these changes favored living arrangement alternatives to marriage.

In Central and Eastern Europe, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were major political changes, such as the fall of Communist governments. These societies entered a new era of increased social freedom, less rigid rules, and less authoritarian governments. They interacted with Western Europe and some became members of the European Union. As a result, the patterns of family life have started to change: marriage rates have declined, and marriage was postponed to a later age. Cohabitation and births to unmarried mothers increased, and in some countries the increase was very quick.

The deinstitutionalization of marriage refers to the weakening of the social and legal norms that regulate peoples' behavior in regard to marriage. The rise in cohabitation is part of other major social changes such as: higher divorce rate, older age at first marriage and childbearing, and more births outside marriage. Factors such as secularization, increased participation of women in the labor force, changing in the meaning of marriage, risk reduction, individualism, and changing views on sexuality have been cited as contributing to these social changes. There has also been a change in modern sexual ethics, with a focus on consent, rather than marital status (for example decriminalization of adultery and fornication; criminalization of marital rape), reflecting new concepts about the role and purpose of sexual interaction, and new conceptualizations of female sexuality and of self-determination. There have been objections against the legal and social regulation of female sexuality; with such regulations being often seen as violations of women's rights.

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