Trends in Marriage and Cohabitation

Abstract

As the United States becomes increasingly diverse, individuals of varyingbackgrounds are interacting and negotiating issues that even 30 years ago most people assumed to be clear-cut. In the family arena, one of the most complicated and controversial topics today is marriage. There is little general agreement about who should be permitted to marry (heterosexuals versus homosexuals), the steps leading up to marriage (sexuality, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock births), and expectations once married (children, gender roles, work versus family, and divorce). While marriage and its conceptualization have become much more con-tentious, it remains a significant institution in the United States. Although some observe a retreat from marriage in the United States, demographics indicate that marriage has not lost its powerful ideological significance (Cherlin, 2004). The United States leads the rest of the industrialized world in terms of marriage rates and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 90 percent of Americans will eventually marry. What has changed, however, is that individuals are waiting longer to marry, they

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