Nonmarital Relationships and Changing Perceptions of Marriage Among African American Young Adults

• Author: Ronald L. Simons,Ashley B. Barr,Leslie Gordon Simons
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12209
• Date: 01 October 2015
• Published date: 01 October 2015

A B. B University at Buffalo, State University of New York

R L. S University of Georgia∗

L G S University of Georgia∗∗

Nonmarital Relationships and Changing Perceptions

of Marriage Among African American Young Adults

Cohabitation has become increasingly

widespread over the past decade. Such trends

have given rise to debates about the relation

between cohabitation and marriage in terms of

what cohabitation means for individual rela-

tionship trajectories and for the institution of

marriage more generally. Using recent data

from a sample of almost 800 African Americans

and xed effects modeling procedures, in the

present study the authors shed some light on

these debates by exploring the extent to which

cohabitation, relative to both singlehood and

dating, was associated with within-individual

changes in African Americans’ marital beliefs

during the transition to adulthood. The ndings

suggest that cohabitation is associated with

changes in marital beliefs, generally in ways

that repositioned partners toward marriage, not

away from it. This was especially the case for

women. These ndings suggest that, for young

African American women, cohabitation holds a

Department of Sociology, 402 Park Hall, Universityat

Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260 (abbarr@buffalo.edu).

∗Department of Sociology, 324 Baldwin Hall, Universityof

Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.

∗∗Department of Sociology, 115 Baldwin Hall, University

of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.

Key Words: African Americans, cohabitation, xed effects,

marital beliefs.

distinct place relative to dating and, in principle

if not practice, relative to marriage.

Cohabitation has become increasingly

widespread in the United States over the past

decade. In fact, cohabiting unions are now the

modal route to marriage and a common experi-

ence in the lives of young people (Cherlin, 2010;

Smock, 2000). Such trends have given rise to

debates about the relation between cohabitation

and marriage. These debates have centered

around not only what cohabitation might mean

for individual marriage experiences and trajec-

tories (e.g., Manning & Cohen, 2012) but also,

more broadly, what the increased prevalence of

cohabitation might mean for the future of mar-

riage as an institution (Cherlin, 2004; Heuveline

& Timberlake, 2004; The National Marriage

Project, 2010; Wilcox & Cherlin, 2011).

In her model of marriage entry, McGinnis

(2003) shed some light on these debates by

arguing that cohabitation, by affecting the costs

and benets associated with marriage, “appears

to signicantly change the context in which

decisions about marriage are made in romantic

relationships” (p. 105). Stanley, Rhoades, and

Markman (2006) made a similar argument

about the potential for cohabitation to change

relational partners’ standpoint with respect to

marriage. In particular, their inertia perspec-

tive argues that the constraints associated with

1202 Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (October 2015): 1202–1216

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12209