The changing family in international perspective; families are becoming smaller and less traditional as fertility rates fall and more persons live alone; Scandinavian countries are the pacesetters in developing nontraditional forms of family living, but the United States has the highest incidence of divorce and of single-parent households - The American Family During the 20th Century

Monthly Labor Review, March, 1990 by Constance Sorrentino

Rise of the consensual union

As noted previously, there has been a rapid increase in the incidence of cohabitation outside of marriage in a number of countries. Such arrangements became much more widespread in the 1970's and, by the 1980's, received more general acceptance in public opinion. For some couples, particularly younger ones, consensual unions may be a temporary arrangement that eventually leads to marriage. For others, it is an alternative to the institution of marriage.

A recent public opinion survey in Germany revealed increasing acceptance of marriages without licenses. The percentage of respondents who disapproved of couples living together without being legally married dropped from 36 percent in 1982 to 27 percent in 1989, and correspondingly, the notion that unmarried couples should enjoy the same legal recognition and advantages as married couples received more support.(7) Germany is a country where the number of consensual unions has remained low, compared with the rest of Europe.

The high marriage rate in the United States means that, so far at least, the country has maintained a fairly low level of nonmarital cohabitation, a rate lower than in most European countries and in a different league entirely from Scandinavia. The Census Bureau reports the number of households comprising two unrelated adults of the opposite sex, with or without children. Although some may be roommate or landlord-tenant arrangements, most of these households can be viewed as consensual unions.(8) None are included in the married-couple data in table 6; rather, they are classified in the "other households" group. According to the Census Bureau data, the incidence of such arrangements has risen from 1.2 percent of all couples living together in 1970 to 3.1 percent in 1980 and 4.7 percent in 1988. Moreover, these percentages are understated to the extent that people in common-law marriages report themselves as married couples and are, therefore, not included in these statistics. By definition, no more than two unrelated adults are present in an unmarried-couple household, but the household also may contain one or more children. About 3 out of every 10 unmarried-couple households included a child under 15 (not age 18, as in other U.S. statistics on children) in 1988, slightly higher than the proportion for 1980. Thus, a minority of consensual unions in the United States involve a parent-child family group.

The U.S. figures on consensual unions are low in comparison with those of Europe and Canada. In Canada, 8 percent of all couples lived in common-law marriages in 1986, and all are included among the married couples in table 6.

Sweden and the Netherlands have recorded rapid increases in consensual unions. In Sweden, the proportion of such unions rose from only 1 percent of all couples in 1960 to 11 percent in 1975 and 19 percent in 1985. In the Netherlands, the ratio rose from 11 percent in 1982 to 19 percent in 1988. Thus, about 1 in every 5 couples in these two countries is living together out of wedlock.