The Perils of “Reading History Sideways”: Is Unmarried Cohabitation Really a Moving Target?

Martin Kreidl , Masaryk University
Klára Reimerová, Masayk University

Several authors argued that unmarried cohabitating unions are a “moving target” and proposed that the meaning of cohabitation changes with its rising diffusion, typically evolving from a “marginal phenomenon” over a “prelude to marriage” phase and a legitimate “alternative to marriage” to finally become “indistinguishable” from marriage. These theories share the emphasis on gradual – and presumably universal – change: countries shall evolve around the same path, only at a different pace and/or with a delayed starting point; i.e., they operate within the so-called “developmental paradigm” of family change and face the peril of “reading history sideways”, which is based on very strong (and untested) assumptions. Interestingly, no study has examined within-country change in the status of unmarried cohabitation so far. Our aim is to see if the position of unmarried cohabitation in the broader landscape of family change evolves over time. Our analysis operates with one common typology of unmarried cohabitations and examines it across two different time points. Did the number of people living in different types of unmarried cohabitations indeed change as predicted by the developmental paradigm? Our analysis is based on the GGS (Generations and Gender Survey) data from Czechia. We use two samples, one from 2005 and one from 2021 to carry out the comparison. We find no change in the representations of various types of unmarried cohabitations. It appears that in 2021, unmarried cohabitations still primarily served as “prelude to marriage”. This challenges the idea that cohabitation is a “moving target”.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course