Page 417 - Essencials of Sociology

390 CHAPTER 12 Marriage and Family
Summarize problems
12.6
in measuring divorce, research
findings on children and
grandchildren of divorce, fathers’
contact after divorce, ex-spouses,
and remarriage.
Watch on MySocLab
Video: Thinking Like a
Sociologist: Marriage, Divorce,
and Families in the U.S.
After Cohabitation. Sociologists have studied a national sample of people who
cohabit. What happens to their relationship? Within three years, 40 percent of cohab-
iting couples have married and 27 percent have broken up. The other third are still
cohabiting (Copen et al 2013).
Do cohabiting couples have children? Of course, they do—but it might surprise you
how common this has become. One of the major changes in families is this: About one-
fourth (23 percent) of all U.S. children are now born to cohabiting parents (Copen
et al. 2013).
Health Benefits of Cohabitation. This heading might surprise you, but cohabitation
makes some people healthier. As in marriage (see Figure 12.4 on page 377), it’s the men
who get the health benefits. Men who cohabit live longer than men who remain single
or divorced. For reasons we don’t know, women don’t get these same health benefits
(Liu and Reczek 2012).
When we turn our focus to children, we find another surprise. Sociologist Kammi
Schmeer (2011) compared the health of children of married and cohabiting parents. On
average, the children of cohabiting parents aren’t as healthy as the children of married
parents. Schmeer suggests that this might be because there is more conflict in cohabit-
ing relationships. But this is just a guess, and no one yet knows the reason. As this is just
a single study, we must be cautious about drawing conclusions. We’ll see what further
research shows.
Does Cohabitation Make Marriage Stronger? Are couples who live together before
marriage less likely to divorce than couples who did not cohabit before marriage? It
would seem that cohabitation would make marriage stronger. Cohabiting couples have
the chance to work out many real-life problems before marriage—and they marry only
after sharing these experiences. A few years ago, researchers found that couples who
cohabited before marriage were more likely to divorce (Osborne et al. 2007; Lichter
and Qian 2008). Now that cohabitation is more common, these initial findings have
changed. The latest research shows that of the recently married, the divorce rate of those
who did and did not cohabit before marriage is about the same (Manning and Cohen
2011). If this finding holds, we can conclude that cohabitation neither weakens nor
strengthens marriage.
The “Sandwich Generation” and Elder Care
The “sandwich generation” refers to people who find themselves sandwiched between
and responsible for two other generations, their children and their own aging parents.
Typically between the ages of 40 and 55, these people find themselves pulled in two
directions. Many feel overwhelmed as these competing responsibilities collide. Some are
plagued with guilt and anger because they can be in only one place at a time and are left
with little time to pursue personal interests—or just to “get away from it all.” As dur-
ing the child-rearing years, women provide more emotional support than men to both
grown children and aging parents (Parker and Patten 2013).
With people living longer, this issue is likely to become increasingly urgent.
Divorce and Remarriage
The topic of family life would not be complete without considering divorce. Let’s first
try to determine how much divorce there is.
Ways of Measuring Divorce
You probably have heard that the U.S. divorce rate is 50 percent, a figure that is popu-
lar with reporters. The statistic is true in the sense that each year about half as many
divorces are granted as there are marriages performed. The totals are about 2 million
marriages and 1 million divorces (Statistical Abstract 2013:Table 135).