 |
Photo: Toa Heftiba via unsplash.com
|
You might think the question about the link between
premarital cohabitation and divorce would have been settled long ago, but researchers
have puzzled about it for decades and the puzzling lives on. Part of why the issue
draws so much interest is that
the
vast majority of people believe that living together before marriage should
improve the odds of doing well even though research has not supported that belief.
This is an update on the latest in this long-running saga of research on the cohabitation
effect.
In 2018, Michael
Rosenfeld and Katharina Roesler published a study that contradicted the
growing consensus in sociology that premarital cohabitation was no longer
associated with greater odds of divorce, even though it
had been associated with poorer marital outcomes for decades. The
explanation various
scholars had given for the cohabitation effect going away are based on the
diffusion perspective, which suggests that cohabitation has become so common it
no longer selects for those already at higher risk, and also that it has lost the
stigma it once had, leading to more acceptance by friends and family. But Rosenfeld
and Roesler’s study showed that the association between premarital cohabitation
and divorce has not declined over the years in any substantial manner. They
argued that prior studies showing no negative associations were based on
samples that did not include marriages that had lasted long enough to fully
capture the increased risk for divorce.
Rosenfeld and Roesler also showed something new in their
2018 study: cohabitation before marriage was associated with a lower risk for
divorce in the first year of marriage but higher risk thereafter. They
interpreted this finding in light of experience theories, noting that living
together before marriage could give couples a leg up at the very start of
marriage because there is less of an adjustment to getting married because the
moving in together transition has already happened. But they found this
advantage to be short-lived. Other factors related to experience may take over
from there, such as how cohabitation can increase acceptance of divorce.
Rosenfeld and Roesler’s study caused a stir in the field,
and this past December, the Journal of
Marriage and Family published two pieces related to their 2018 findings.
The first is a comment on the study by Wendy Manning,
Pamela Smock, and Arielle Kuperberg and the second is a response by Rosenfeld
and Roesler. The articles are illuminating about the complexities of cohabitation
and the challenges of studying such effects in social science.
In a
prior article on Rosenfeld and Roesler’s 2018 publication, Galena Rhoades
and I described the study and competing theories for why living together before
marriage can be associated with lower odds of success in marriage (i.e.,
selection, experience, and inertia). I refer you to that article for more background
information than I will get into here about the ways living together might
increase risks for some couples.
The Critique by Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg
In their critique, Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg make two
primary criticisms of Rosenfeld and Roesler’s study. First, they argue that their
statistical models include multiple and confounding measures of time. Their
article is an excellent primer on just how many, and how complicated, are the
decisions and steps to prepare a data set such as the one used in these papers for
such analyses. In both the original study by Rosenfeld and Roesler, and in the
critique and response, these family scholars use the National Survey of Family
Growth (NSFG).
Second, Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg emphasize the
important decisions one has to make when using the NSFG about age ranges. Here
is just a sample of that complexity:
For example, if one is using the
1988 data to examine marriages dating back to 1970, as Rosenfeld and Roesler
do, the experiences of women married in 1970 would represent a narrow age
range: women who were 15–44 years old in 1988 but who were 26 years old or
younger in 1970. Another age truncation issue is that relatively long marriages
cannot be observed with these data without bias toward those that occurred at
young ages. For example, a 15-year marriage can only be observed for women who
married at age 29 or younger. (p. 3) [i]
This is the basis for their assertion that it is best to
limit the analytic sample for this research to marriages of 10 or fewer years
duration. In essence, Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg argue that Rosenfeld and
Roesler made a number of decisions about the sample and statistical modeling that
are inconsistent with the prior literature and not sound. They present further analyses
in their response and stand by their claim that the cohabitation effect has
disappeared.
Rosenfeld and Roesler’s Reply
Rosenfeld and Roesler state that Manning, Smock, and
Kuperberg misinterpreted how time-related variables had been handled in their
original study, noting that the authors of the critique could have asked for clarification
instead of building arguments around false assumptions. More importantly, they further
explain their belief that prior works (along with new analyses by Manning,
Smock, and Kuperberg) are based on decisions that leave out 70% of the relevant,
available sample. This is primarily the result of that decision to limit the
analytic sample to marriages of 10 years or less duration, as noted above. Manning,
Smock, and Kuperberg contend that this is standard, best practice when using
the NSFG, while Rosenfeld and Roesler argue the decision unnecessarily limits
sample and statistical power, causing a data-based bias in favor of finding
that there is no longer a divorce risk associated with premarital cohabitation.
This is a matter of disagreement that has important implications.
Their reply also makes clear just how methodologically
important their prior finding is showing that premarital cohabitation is
associated with lower odds of divorce in the first year of marriage but greater
odds thereafter. Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg attempted to replicate that
finding and did not obtain it (but using options they preferred, not the same
set up as Rosenfeld and Roesler). Rosenfeld and Roesler point out that their
critique actually does display evidence of this first-year finding, but that the
effect was not statistically significant because of the smaller sample. [ii] Thus, Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg do not account for that effect in other
models the run. In practice, that is not an unusual decision, but Rosenfeld and
Roesler believe that this decision is partly based on the problem they see in restricting
the sample based on duration of marriages. Overall, they believe these
decisions lead to analyses that are less likely to find the increased risk for
divorce.
Filtering out the couples who
have been married longer (as MSK do) enhances the Recent Cohort Fallacy because
in the very early stages of marriages, premarital cohabitation reduces the risk
of marital breakups. (p. 6)
Rosenfeld and Roesler also assert that Manning, Smock, and
Kuperberg do not adequately account for the timing of children. They explain
that cohabiters are much more likely than non-cohabiters to already have
children at the time of marriage, and this difference has nearly doubled over
the decades. Thus, cohabiting couples who married in later cohorts were quite a
bit more likely than those marrying earlier to already have a child when they
married, and the extra stability from having children that has changes by
cohorts over the years is another factor that lowers the apparent cohort-based association
between cohabitation and divorce. [iii]
Rosenfeld and Roesler’s stand by their conclusion that the
average increased risk for divorce associated with premarital cohabitation is
mostly unchanged over the last 40 years.
Comment and Implications
As I stated at the outset, most people believe cohabitation should
improve one’s odds of marital success. Rosenfeld and Roesler’s work suggests this
may only be true very early in marriage. Otherwise, not so much. As ever on
this subject, questions abound. Are marital outcomes truly worse for those who
live together before marriage, and, if so, for whom? For example, it is less
clear that things work the same way, on average, for African
Americans who cohabit, and economic
disadvantage is deeply embedded in how cohabitation relates to risk in
marriage. [iv]
One of the most intriguing questions remains, why is there
any association with risk? As Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg note, the long-accepted
conclusion in sociology is that differences in marital outcomes based on
premarital cohabitation are due to selection—that the added risk is really
about who cohabits and who does not. Selection is surely a large part of the
story. Of course, on top of that, they argue the risk is no longer evident. Rosenfeld
and Roesler disagree.
Although there are strong arguments on each side, I believe
Rosenfeld and Roesler get the better of the debate. They make a compelling case
for their analytic decisions and findings. Further, they clearly describe how
the choices affect the findings (theirs, and that of others). Wherever a family
researcher stands on these decisions and debate, the whole matter provides an
feast of interesting questions and controversies.
The argument that the overall cohabitation effect
will disappear has not been compelling to me, although I have no trouble
accepting the possibility. There are two explanations for how the experience of
cohabitation might increase risks for some couples, net of selection: changes in
attitudes [v] and inertia. My colleague Galena Rhoades and I are leading proponents of the
latter theory, which contains no obvious reason to anticipate a negative
effect going away for a large subgroup of those who cohabit prior to marriage.
Inertia emphasizes that when two people move in together, all
other things being equal, they are making it harder to break up. If so, the
state of the relationship, especially at the time of moving together, should matter. Some couples are, in essence, increasing
the constraints to remain together (including, for some, on into having
children and marrying) prior to dedication being clear, mutual, and high. [vi] We believe that is part of why waiting until marriage, or at least engagement, is
associated with lower risk in seven studies.
That findings also exists in the NSFG, including one of the papers suggesting the
overall cohabitation effect is gone (Manning
and Cohen, 2012).
Also, it is worth noting that all of the studies related to
the controversy about whether or not the cohabitation effect still exists focus
only on the odds of divorce and not on marital quality. In one of our studies, Galena
Rhoades and I show that marital quality is lower among those who started living
together before engagement or marriage (as inertia theory predicts), and in marriages
occurring during the period of time when others have argued that the overall
cohabitation effect no longer exists. [vii]
One of the other stories in this controversy is endemic to social
science. Researcher
degrees of freedom is a concept referring to the fact that the reported findings
we end up reading about in social science come at the tail end of a great many consequential
decisions by the researchers on matters of data sets, included or excluded variables,
and statistical models. Rosenfeld and Roesler make a strong plea for transparency
in how researchers make their decisions. They are also circumspect in stating
that the extraordinary complexity of changes in marriage and cohabitation in
the last five decades make it impossible to account for all that may matter
when analyzing and interpreting data on this subject.
There is no simple answer for questions about premarital
cohabitation. There is no experiment one can conduct to prove X leads to Y. Would
you participate in an experiment where researchers could randomly assigned you
to either path A or path B to study the differences in outcomes over the course
of your life? Me either. As Rosenfeld and Roesler put it, “. . . all models of
complex reality are flawed” (p. 3). Count on that, and count on the interesting
saga of research on premarital cohabitation to continuing.
A briefer
version of this article was first publish on the site for the
Institute for Family Studies, on January 12, 2021. This is the extended version
with more detail and more extensive footnotes.
i. These page numbers are those in the advance, online publications of these
paper. Once the articles appear in the printed journals, they will have different
page numbers.
ii. This is possible because an estimate of an effect can be noisy, having a lot of
variability in a sample around whatever average size of effect is obtained.
iii. Although it is true that cohabiting parents are more likely to break up than
married parents, including those having children prior to marrying, it is also
true that having children makes it more likely a couple will stay together or
stay together longer—which makes the matter a big deal in analyzing outcomes
related to divorce. Rosenfeld and Roesler argue that the specific way Manning,
Smock, and Kuperberg control for children at marriage makes the control
variable a proxy for cohabiting before marriage. Because having children before
marriage is differentially changing across cohorts, they argue that the net
effect favors the overall finding that the cohabitation effect has gone away. Related
to this issue of children before marriage, Tach
and Halpern-Meekin showed that some portion of the premarital cohabitation
effect is driven by premarital cohabiters being more likely to have non-marital
births before marriage. One can easily argue that cohabitation and child
effects are hopelessly intertwined. Still, either factor can easily be seen to
have the same implications for a causal risk of the sort Galena Rhoades and I
have focused on, where relationship transitions fit a pattern of the constraints
on staying together increase substantially prior to maturing of dedication to
be together. Such factors can prematurely
create inertia for a relationship to continue when a different path may
have seen the relationship end or helped a couple form clearer decisions
supporting commitment.
iv. As one example, an important matter running through
all these themes is how two people can signal commitment to each other and
those around them. Cultural context is important, as I wrote long ago: “I do, by the way, believe that
cohabitation can signal higher levels of commitment (compared to not
cohabiting) among some who are very poor. I think it likely that the potency of
a signal is partially related to what other signals are available. For many
complex reasons, marriage is so far off the radar screen in terms of experience
for many in poverty that another signal like cohabitation can take on signal
value.”
vi. Norval Glenn had made a similar suggestion around the same time we were
developing our theory, focusing on the idea that “premature entanglement”
foreshortened a solid search for a good match between mates (Glenn,
2002). He and I had dinner at a conference around 2000, and it was quite a
delight sharing ideas framed from different theoretical systems (mate selection
and search versus commitment theory) that led to similar implications. I also
highly recommend this article by Sassler,
Addo, and Lichter (2012).
vii. It is a fair point to note that this study of ours, in particular, is based on
vastly simpler sample and design (using a random phone sample) than studies
using the NSFG. On the other hand, analyses of relationship quality based on
cohabitation history in existing marriage have a built-in bias against finding
lower marital quality for those who cohabited prior to marriage or engagement.
Such samples have already selected out those who divorced and are no longer
married (thus, not in the sample), likely biasing tests for differences in
marital quality toward non-significance. Still, if you think about either the
experience theory of cohabitation or the inertia theory of cohabitation, we see
no reason to believe the risk should abate for those who move in together prior
to having figured out their intended future.