Reply to Probably stupid question: Did unmarried couples used to not be able to live together?

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Reply to "Probably stupid question: Did unmarried couples used to not be able to live together?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You don't sound old enough to be using a computer. Go play outside. [/quote]

LOL, this. The poster with the timeline above is fairly accurate-- caveat obviously that we're talking about hetero relationships.

~1986-1995, my aunt lived with her boyfriend (they broke up and she married someone else). She was an artist in NYC, but it definitely wasn't unheard of around the DMV either. Still, through the 90s, almost all of my other family members didn't live together before marrying. I remember meeting another teen in the early 90s whose mom lived with a boyfriend and said she'd never marry again, and that was at least unusual.

I would say as of at least the mid-80s that it was still at least as common to get married WITHOUT having lived with someone, and not just if you were religious or waiting to have sex until you were married. Cohabitating before marriage was not seen as simply sensible or a requirement by the majority of people. Remember than in 1985, a 75-year-old grandmother of the bride would have been born in 1910, and a 55-year-old mother in 1930.

Also in the 80s and even the 90s, if you did live together, it was expected generally to be a step on the road to likely marriage. Now, that's still probably true of the majority, but many people never plan on marrying, which I feel like was rarer pre-2000 or so.

Also pre-1995 or so, the vast majority of people who were living together would at least get married quickly if the woman got pregnant, but now it seems that in as many as half of those cases, they marry years later when they have more time to plan a big wedding or just never marry. [/quote]

I'm adding that the Pill and Roe v Wade had a lot to do with all this.

Most people don't live together without having sex. You have sex without a 99%+ BC method and there's a good chance you'll get pregnant within a couple of years, maybe even a few months. You get pregnant without being married, well, even the Puritans did that. But you get married post-haste. The stigma for unmarried mothers is stronger and lasted longer than the stigma for unmarried cohabitation-- it's still going. So you were taking a chance. What if the guy wasn't that serious? What if he left you? Not that he couldn't do that if you were married, but at least you wouldn't have gotten OMGpregnantoutofwedlock. So there's that. When couples had a greater assurance they could live together indefinitely (at least in theory) without a pregnancy, it was safer in terms of social stigma. It was more "admitting you have sex," which was less stigmatizing than taking the chance of "raising a b****rd child."  [/quote]

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