Name:Grace
Instructor: I-Ming Shih
Course Number: 2020
Date: May 6, 2008
Topic: Should umarried couples cohabit before marriage?
(Argumentative Essay)
(Rough Draft)
Whenever I watch the newspaper and news channels on TV, it is unavoidable to learn the issues and problems of cohabitation. From the report, more and more people live together or cohabit rather than get married since families have changed in the last several decades. Even university couples live together in order to know if they are perfect for each other. However, I disagree with cohabitation in terms of such a simple reason. As far as I am concerned, cohabitation without careful negotiation and consideration ahead may give rise to serious problems. Thus, I am convinced that there are more defects than advantages when it comes to living together.
According to researches and reports, I believe most couples in cohabitation relationships lack faith. They would think there are chances of finding someone better. Patricia Morgan concluded that “both men and women in cohabiting relationships are more likely to be unfaithful to their partners than married people.” Namely, Cohabiting couples are easily to get involved in affairs because of lacking promise. Also, Linda Waite’s research looking at cohabitation’s negative effect points that showing cohabiting couples look forward to their relationships to be faithful, the surveys also showed that twenty percent of cohabiting women reported they had secondary sex partners, while only four percent of married women reported they did.
Another reason that I disagree with living together is that cohabitation relationships are fragile. From Patricia Morgan’s review of researches, contrary to marriages, the relationships last shortly and the couples are more likely to break up. These tentative and uncommitted relationships are liable to get depressing outcomes and disappointments. Just as said by David H. Olson and Amy Olson-Sigg, cohabitation reflects uncertainty.
Aside from couples living together, effects on children born to cohabiting parents are influential. Some believe if cohabiting couples have children, then they must be committed and stable. Nevertheless, I believe that cohabitations with children are more likely to break up; what’s worse, they possibly influence children in one way or another. Waite said that the unstable arrangements resulted from couples without intention of getting married may lead to serious problems for children raised in cohabiting households. Children born to cohabiting parents are more likely to experience a series of disruptions in their family life, which can bring about negative results for their emotional and educational development. Moreover, according to Morgan, when cohabiting couples with children break up, one parent sometimes move with in a new person. Therefore, they form informal step-families, which pose other risks to the children. “In one study, young men living in step-families were 1.4 times more likely to be serious or persistent offenders,” said Morgan. “More than one in five young people living in step-families run away from home.”
Some couples live together in terms of economic advantages; they expect to save money by sharing living expenses, according to David H. Olson and Amy Olson-Sigg. Nonetheless, researches sowed that cohabiting couples are disadvantaged financially with the lowest level of wealth among household types. Morgan pointed that “at all socio-economic levels, cohabiting couples accumulate less wealth than married couples.” Also, cohabiting mothers often lack access to the father's income, making it more difficult to balance their caring responsibilities with their careers. Thus, there are still problems behind simply living together to save money.
In a nutshell, I do not agree to cohabitation in terms of such analysis. The idea of testing if couples are proper to live together is basically fine but things are not quite simple when it comes to forming a family.
