One way to gauge the effects of premartial sex is to look at cohabitation (which logically implies premarital sex) and the nature of those relationships. Here are some links and examples of the research regarding premarital sex and its outcomes as compared and contrasted with the committed, married couple who waited until marriage for that most intimate of human relationships.
An excellent into to the subject is at
www.members.aol.com/cohabiting/. Some interesting studies and essays can also be found at:
http://www.leaderu.com/critical/cohabitation-socio.html
And an excellent page at
www.heritage.org/Research/Family/MapOfT ... hartid=198 demonstrating the general psycho/social effects of premaritalsex/cohabitation across a number of dimensions.
Also interesting is
www.heritage.org/Research/Family/BG1535.cfm, regarding other peripheral effects of cohabitation and a sexually active unmarried lifestyle.
Also see
www.heritage.org/Research/Family/BG1115.cfm
A short essay from the Howard Center's online
Family In America periodical is indicative of the general thrust of much of the data:
No Substitute for Marriage
As promulgators of luminous social doctrines, the Woodstock Generation celebrated the belief that living together could provide all the benefits of wedlock without imposing all of marriage’s oppressive restrictions. This belief has now so fully insinuated itself into academic and political rhetoric that many who subscribe to it regard resistance as symptomatic of blind ignorance. But in a recent and thoroughly empirical comparison of the two social arrangements, researchers from the University of Michigan and the Centro de Estudios de Polación in Argentina conclude that when couples enter into nonmarital cohabitation, they are embarking on a far riskier and less stable life course than are peers who tie the marital knot.
To evaluate the comparative character of cohabitation and wedlock, the Michigan and Argentine scholars examined data collected between 1962 and 1993 for 906 white men and women born in 1961 in the Detroit area. Their findings offer nothing at all to support the views of those championing cohabitation as a modern equivalent to marriage. The researchers leave no doubt as to the relative fragility and impermanence of cohabitation: “In every case in which we compare a transition that denotes interrupting living with the partner, such as separation or living apart, cohabitors have significantly higher rates than their married peers.” The Michigan and Argentine researchers calculate that within two years, almost one third (32.4%) of cohabiting couples in their study had separated, compared to less than one-tenth of married couples (8.3%). Overall, the data for the study period indicate that “cohabitors have rates of separation nearly five times as high as married couples” (Odds Ratio of 4.62).
Going the other direction, the authors of the new study find that once cohabiting couples separate, they are far less likely to reconcile. “If separation occurs,” the researchers observe, “…cohabitors have rates of reconciliation only 33% as high as those who are in marital unions.”
The Michigan and Argentine scholars interpret their findings as evidence buttressing “past research that views marriage as a relationship that is qualitatively distinctive from cohabitation with a higher degree of commitment and stability than cohabitation.”
So much for the Age of Aquarius.
(Source: Georgina Binstock and Arland Thornton, “Separations, Reconciliations, and Living Apart in Cohabiting and Marital Unions,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65 [2003]: 432-443.)
And from the
All About Cohabiting Before Marriage website linked to above:
THE PROBLEM OF COHABITATION
"
If the family trends of recent decades are extended into the future,
the result will not only be a growing uncertainty within marriage, but
the gradual elimination of marriage in favor of casual liaisons,
oriented to adult expressiveness and self-fulfillment. The problem
with this scenario is that children will be harmed, adults probably no
happier, and the social order could collapse."
- David Popenoe in Promises to Keep.
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Cohabitation by definition is "two unmarried people of the opposite-sex living together." An alternative definition is "two roommates who are romantic partners and share living space and all the responsibilities that go with it - without a formal, legal commitment." It has been called by various terms, such as "living together," "shacking up," "cohabitation," "serial monogamy"or "living in sin." It is a halfway house for people who do not want the degree of personal and social commitment that marriage represents, at least for now (Waite & Gallagher 2000:42). The numbers have now risen to nearly 5 million. Between 1960 and 2004, the number of unmarried couples in America increased by over 1200 percent.
(See Facts Page OR Tables for Data)
We are seeing a massive cultural change where romantic love and courtship has been giving way to an altogether new alternative. We are entering a period of "cultural cluelessness" as Rutgers sociologist Barbara Dafoe Whitehead explains (Popenoe & Whitehead 1999). "Most societies have had a script and young adults have been guided through that script. And now the script is being so radically revised that nobody knows what it is anymore or people have torn it up."
The "benefits" of living together unmarried, as told by cohabitors (pers. comm.), are as follows: "sex readily available;" "sharing of rent, cooking, etc.;" "keep money separate;" "avoid responsibility of partner's debts;" "leave easy if things get too rough;" "avoid pain and stigma of divorce;" "more individual free time;" "no obligation to care for partner of their children if sick, lose their job or unable to care for themselves;" "no sexual strings attached;" "free to see others;" "you can love'em and leave 'em;" "no legal entanglements;" "no nagging;" "easy come, easy go."
Table 1. Couples Living Together: YEAR TOTAL
2004 5,080,000
2002 4,898,000
2000 4,736,000
1998 4,236,000
1997 4,000,000
1995 3,700,000
1990 2,856,000
1980 1,589,000
1970 523,000
1960 439,000
Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P20-537; America's Families and Living Arrangements: March 2000; and U. S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division, Current Population Survey, 2004 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2004).
Between 1975 and 1995, the proportion of high school seniors agreeing that "it is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along" skyrocketed from 35 percent to 59 percent (Popenpoe 1999).
The issue becomes even more difficult for ministry when cohabitation precedes marriage. This is the case for more than half of all couples before they walk down the aisle, making cohabitation the most common way couples in America begin their lives together (Branon 1994 & Stalcup 1997). Popular opinion suggests that living together before marriage is a good idea - a sort of trial period. There is, however, an ever-growing collection of research data that sheds a very unfavorable light on cohabitation. Marriage is one shoe you cannot try on before you buy it (McManus 1995:92). Cohabitation contributes heavily to the demise of most marriages even before they begin!
Cohabitation relationships are typically short lived. Currently half of cohabiting relationships end within a year due to the couple either becoming married or separating (Seltzer, 2000). Within the first two years approximately twenty-nine percent of cohabiting couples separate compared to only 9% of married couples. In addition, within five years from the beginning of a cohabitation relationship more than half of these relationships have ended even if the couple had gotten married during that time (Seltzer, 2000).
The extensive research involving couples who cohabited in the 1970s and 1980s strongly suggest that marriage preceded by cohabitation has a detrimental effect on marital satisfaction and places couples at a higher risk of marital dissolution (Kamp-Dush, Cohan, & Amato, 2003: 540). Depending on the specific statistical methods used it was found that couples who marry after a period of cohabitation are at a 35% to 50% greater risk of separating and/or divorcing than marriages without prior cohabitation (Seltzer, 2000; Teachman, 2002; Teachman, 2003). Cohabitation is the invisible, front end cancer of marriage!
In the 1960s and 1970s, the small numbers of cohabiting couples in America could be fairly described as "anti-marriage" (part of the anti-establishment movement). They were deliberately seeking an alternative to traditional marriage, an institution they viewed as "repressive" or "irrelevant." Much of this might be attributed to Margaret Mead (1901-1978), a prominent and extremely influential cultural anthropologist from Columbia University who suggested the concept of "trial marriage." Her field work was with Polynesianan society and her book, Coming of Age in Samoa, continues to have an major effect on its many readers. In 1983, five years after Mead had died, Derek Freeman published: Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he challenged all of Mead's major findings. Freeman based his critique on his own four years of field experience in Samoa and on recent interviews with Mead's surviving informants. According to Freeman, these women denied much of Mead's findings and claimed that they had lied to Mead. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute recently declared Coming of Age in Samoa the "worst book of the 20th century".
Today, however, many cohabiting couples have a different outlook. Rather than "anti-marriage," it is more accurate to say that many (though certainly not all) of these couples are "anti-divorce." That is, they are so fearful of a marital breakup that they are looking to cohabitation as a "trial marriage" that will protect them from entering into a marriage that will end up in divorce just as their parents (Mattox 1997). According to the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University, young people today are more concerned with having fun and making money and less focused on forming lasting relationships that lead to marriage and raising family (Popenoe & Whitehead 1999). The report says that the young are in favor of living together as a try-out for marriage or as an alternative to marriage, believe sex is for fun and has no string attached, have a fear of divorce and see marriage (and divorce) as a potential economic liability. Although, oddly, most expect some day to meet and marry somebody who can fulfill their emotional and spiritual needs. Explanations for the rise of cohabitation include: permissive sexual morals, greater tolerance for alternative lifestyles, disenchantment with traditional dating marriage, the femisist movement, personal independence and autonomy, narcissism or 'meism,' the desire to avoid the commitment and finality of marriage (Newcomb 1983:79). (See this site's Explanation page.)
The trend toward cohabitation and away from marriage is unprecedented. "Never before in Western history has it been acceptable for unmarried couples to live together," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, on the front page of the Washington Post. "It was unacceptable a couple decades ago. It is acceptable now" (Stalcup 1997).