Family Trends

For my class we reviewed changing patterns in intimate relationships. Some of the key points we hit were premarital sex, cohabitation, delayed marriage, household size and women into the workforce. The pattern that caught my attention the most was cohabitation. Cohabitation means to be leaving with someone with whom you hold an intimate, sexual relationship outside of marriage. This form of living has dramatically increased in the last 60 years. It is now a very common thing for couples to participate in this form of living. I personally know several couples who are in a cohabitant relationship. I also have an aunt who now has two kids and has been living with his partner for the past 10 years but has yet to consider marriage. I am pretty sure that marriage is out of the picture and that they rather live the rest of their life as unmarried partners. I think this has direct correlation with another pattern that we talked about this week and that would be delayed marriages. Back in 1950s the average marriage age for both genders were between 20.5 and 22.5 years old. The most recent study performed shows that the average has dramatically increased to 26 years old for women and 28 years old for men. Furthermore, delaying marriage will affect the number of kids people have in there future. Having fewer kids is bad for society because we are at the point where not enough babies are being born to replace the amount of people that are dying. All this information worries me a little bit, but my primary concern is cohabitation. I personally feel like cohabitation is a bad thing, I have mixed opinions about people playing out their intimate and sexual relationships outside of marriage. Obviously, I do not share my opinions to offend or disrespect anybody this is just what I think. I believe that such intimacy should be kept between a husband and wife. The reason for my believe goes out further than just keeping such relationships in matrimony. We were shown a video of how important it is for kids to have both parents in their home. The video discussed how important families are to society. However, I am not saying that cohabitant families are not capable of having a strong household foundation. I think that cohabitant couples are more than capable of having a good solid family but the only thing that they are missing is the “bind” that keeps them together even when things are hard. The video discussed the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The program has 17 goals that will help them with economic growth, lower crime, gender equality and more. The core of this program is family; a strong stable family is the foundation of success. When a child is raised with both parents, they are more likely to finish school without being held back. Also, a family with both parents are more likely to raise more successful daughters. A father figure can give their daughters the love, attention, and protection that they need in their teenage years, thus, reducing the percentage of teen pregnancies. If a teenage girl is being taken care of and does not have to worry about the responsibility of child, she will most likely have a brighter future when compared to a girl who had a baby and lacked a father figure. As you can tell I am a big advocate for marriage, I believe that being married can have so many benefits to a family, but I also believe that even a couple who is not bind together by marriage can have wonderful family and life.

The data that I used in this blog was taken from the book Lauer, Robert H., and Lauer, Jeanette C. (2012) Marriage & Family: The Quest for Intimacy, 8th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

The referenced video was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp2lfmb6rlY