Families: Changing Patterns of Cohabitation

The number of couples cohabiting, as opposed to getting married, has undoubtedly increased in second half the 20^th century.

Indeed, in 2015, research showed that the vast majority of marriages (80%) were between couples who had previously cohabited. As such, the increase in cohabitation is not necessarily linked to a decline in marriage although may well be deeply linked with the delay in marriage.

Of course while cohabitation is often a precursor to marriage, this is not always the case. Approximately 3% of families in the UK are cohabiting couples, so while they are more numerous than lone-parent families and have more than doubled since the mid 1990s, they are still massively outnumbered by married couples.