Marriage gap grows; cohabiting becoming 'new norm'

SALT LAKE CITY — More than six decades after Robert and Virginia Peterson said "I do," they spend most of their time together, volunteering for their church, attending their beloved University of Utah football and basketball games and walking two miles a day to stay fit. They've weathered life's joys and sorrows, from the heart-wrenching stillbirth of one of their four children to the pride of watching the other three grow, graduate and launch their own successful careers and families.

Marriage was always in the cards for these now-octogenarians, who friends call Ginna and Bob. But the structure of family they embraced and expected — meet, date, marry — is becoming far less certain as American couples increasingly choose to live together, instead. What that will mean for marriage as an institution and for families is a book not yet written. But experts say they see clear changes, both already occurring and in the future.

A survey just out from online public opinion pollster SodaHead.com says that 70 percent of Americans approve of couples living together before marriage. That number is higher than research studies have found.

But the trend toward cohabiting is clear, says Andrew J. Cherlin, professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and Family in America Today."

"The majority of young adults now live with a partner before they marry," he says, adding that the ramifications are being studied and debated. Some say as a "trial run" for marriage, it might reduce the divorce rate. "On the other hand, cohabitation carries with it the idea that relationships are easy to leave if yours is not going well. They might carry that ethic over into their marriages."

Between 1960 and 2009, the number of nonmarital cohabiting couples — "sexual partners who are not married to each other but share a household" — in the United States increased more than fifteenfold, according to "The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2010," produced by the University of Virginia National Marriage Project. About one-fourth of unmarried women 25 to 39 live with a partner and a similar number have done so in the past. Living together without marriage was virtually nonexistent when the Petersons were wooing and wedding.