Should Couples Live Together Before Marriage - Literature review Example

Download file to see previous pages Before elucidating whether couples should live together before marriage, it is important to delineate the reasons why people opt for this trend. Some of the reasons why people tend to cohabitate are outlined by Bruess and Schroeder and they include couples trying to find out whether they are a match for each other, to share the financial burdens in the contemporary world, and also to investigate whether a spouse has the preferred attributes for marriage (130). There are many misconceptions mainly among the younger generation that cohabitating is a sure way of averting a divorce after marriage. However, much of the perceptions among the young generation are misguided and not supported by research.
Scrutiny on the National Survey of Families and Households data conducted in 1987 and 1988 and cited by Huang et-al indicated approximately fifty-one percent and fifty-six percent of respondents to have given approval and support to finding compatibility as one of the reasons why people live together before marriage (2). Approximately twenty-seven percent of the respondents supported financial expediency in terms of sharing their financial needs as the reason they cohabited (Huang et-al 2). Other reasons for living together before marriage from the data included sexual satisfaction and that cohabitation does not mean that the spouses have to be faithful (Huang et-al 2). In layman's terms, fear of commitment drove the respondents to cohabitation. Other respondents who were found to be living together before marriage cited a lack of interest in marriage as their major reason for cohabiting (Huang et-al 3).
According to Greenberg and Conklin, there is a collective conviction that living together before marriage is one of the techniques that helps parties involved to evade a problematic union in marriage. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More