Cohabitation has been rising over the last quarter-century.
The number of American couples cohabiting rose from roughly one
million in 1977 to roughly five million in 1997
(Casper & Cohen, 2000).
These raw numbers correspond to 1.5% of households
in 1977
compared to 4.8% in 1997. Smock’s
(2000) review documented the extensive research done on cohabitation in
the preceding 15 years. Many
recent studies have been done with nationally representative data sets.
Among the findings of these
national studies, Manning and Smock
(2002) found that 74% of the female cohabiters studied expected
to marry, whereas McGinnis (2003) found that cohabiters perceived fewer
costs and fewer benefits to marrying than did non-cohabiting daters. Lye
and Waldron (1997) used data from the national Monitoring
the Future study of high school seniors to examine views toward
cohabitation in this younger age group; they found, among other things,
that religiosity was negatively related to support for
cohabitation. The number of studies done with college students appears to
be surprisingly modest, considering many in this group would likely be
cohabiting or thinking of doing so.
One study of college students, by Huffman, Chang, Rausch, and
Schaffer (1994), also found religiosity to be inversely related to
“disposition toward cohabitation.”
The
present study seeks to add to the literature on college students’
attitudes toward cohabitation and replicate previous findings pertaining
to religiosity. A new
direction comes from Knee’s theory of relationships (Knee, Patrick,
& Lonsbary, 2003), positing
outlooks of destiny (belief that
relationships are fated from the beginning) and growth (belief
that relationships can improve with work by the couple members).
Four hypotheses are offered:
(1) the more one is partial to the growth outlook on
relationships, the more he/she will favor cohabitation; (2) the more one
is partial to the destiny outlook, the less he/she will favor
cohabitation; (3) the more one views religion as important, the less
he/she will favor cohabitation; and (4) students’ attitudes toward
cohabitation will be positively correlated with their parents’ and
friends’ attitudes.
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Sixty
students at a large southwestern state university participated (51
females, 9 males). In addition to demographics, the questionnaire included the
following measures:
Attitudes toward cohabitation.
Five items were taken from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study
(Johnston, Bachman, & O'Malley, 1986; Lye & Waldron, 1997).
The five items were combined into an index, with higher scores
representing more
favorable attitudes toward cohabitation (our alpha was
.81). Separate from the MTF
index, we came up with one item to measure overall attitudes toward
cohabitation. People
selected between whether it “should never be done” (scored as 1), is
“acceptable only as part of a transition to marriage” (2), or is
“acceptable for any reason, even if a couple makes a lifestyle out of
it for many years” (3).
Attitudes
toward relationship development.
To keep the survey brief, eight (out of 22) questions with high
item-total correlations in Knee’s research were taken from Knee’s
Implicit Theories of Relationships Scale (Knee et al., 2003).
The four growth items
were combined to form an index (α =
.43), as were the four destiny items (α = .65).
Religiosity. Four items measuring attitudes
toward religion (Jessor
& Jessor, 1977; Wills, Yaeger, & Sandy, 2003) comprised an index
(α = .93).
Perceptions of others’
attitudes toward cohabitation.
Two separate
questions assessed students’ perceptions of parents’ and friends’
attitudes toward cohabitation. The
same three choices as above for own cohabitation attitude (never,
transition, or any reason) were used.
Some
additional items on attitudes toward marriage, unrelated to the present
paper, were also administered.
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Analyses
focus on our two measures of attitudes toward cohabitation, the
five-item and one-item measures (themselves correlated, r = .74, p
< .001), and how they relate to other variables.
Age.
Attitudes
toward cohabitation were more positive in older participants, as age
correlated .29 with the five-item index and .30 with the one item, both p
< .05.
One must consider the low number of older subjects represented in
this sample, however.
Attitudes toward relationship
development.
Of the four correlations between the two cohabitation attitude
measures and the destiny and growth measures, only one was significant
(growth beliefs and the one-item cohabitation measure, r = -.29, p
< .05).
This finding was opposite to prediction.
Religiosity.
Religiosity correlated negatively with both the five-item and
the one-item cohabitation attitude measures (r’s = -.64 and
-.52, respectively, both p’s < .001).
The more a person relies on God, religion, and prayer, the less
favorable he/she was toward
cohabitation.
Perceptions
of others’ attitudes toward cohabitation.
Of the four correlations between the two cohabitation attitude
measures and the two other-perception measures (parents and friends),
all were positive (r’s between
.33 and .59, all p
≤ .01). Thus, students’
attitudes were similar to their
parents’ and friends’, at least based on the students’ estimations
of the latter’s attitudes.
Cohabitation history.
Respondents were divided into whether they currently cohabited (n
= 10), were not currently cohabiting but did in the past (n =
12), and never had (n = 38).
On the five-item index, the never-cohabited group was the least
favorable toward
cohabitation (M = 2.55), the current cohabiters
were in the middle (M = 3.06), and the past cohabiters were the
most favorable (M = 3.36). These
differences were significant, F (2, 56) = 3.67, p <
.05. On the one-item
cohabitation attitude measure, the means
were not significantly
different (p = .11), but the trend was also for the
never-cohabiters to be low in support for cohabitation.
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