Cohabitation Nation

"Cohabitation ... becoming the norm in Hungary" | Posted 7:39 PM

Like much of the rest of the world, marriage rates are falling in Eastern Europe:

Ambitious and free-thinking, East European youths are spurning the age-old institution of marriage to the point where the formerly communist region now has one of the lowest marriage rates in the world.

"You can't rely on relationships to make you happy," said Judit, a 24-year-old, curly haired lawyer working at a multinational firm in Budapest. "You have to be happy with yourself, that's the most important thing."

More and more young people share Judit's views in Hungary and the region, where the transition to democracy and a market economy has brought about a noticeable shift in the way younger generations view life and relationships.

During communist times in Hungary, most young people still married to conform with social norms, even though divorce rates were high.

But in a new world that places more emphasis on individualism, social norms seem to be the last thing on young people's minds. A focus on working hard to get ahead and a preoccupation with having fun during free time can be deadly to traditional relationships, sociologists say.

"Old and new values are colliding after the transition," said Zsolt Speder, director of the Population Research Institute at the Central Statistics Office (KSH) in Budapest. "The new capitalist system has brought about a largely self-centered society where the compromise needed in any marriage is shunned."

According to KSH, the number of new marriages in Hungary last year was less than those in 1970, and the country now has at 4.3 marriages per 1,000 residents one of the lowest marriage rates in Europe, lower than in the Scandinavian countries, which are know for their permissiveness.

The pattern is the same in many of the East European nations, eight of which -- the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia -- are due to join the EU next year.

Lithuania and Latvia have had spectacular declines in marriage rates since the fall of communism 14 years ago, from over 10 marriages per 1,000 people in 1989 to 4.5 and 3.9 respectively last year.

In Slovenia, marriage rates dropped by 20 percent over the decade of the 1990s.

In strongly Catholic Poland and traditionally minded Romania, however, marriage rates are higher, over five per 1,000 residents.

Magdalena Picsova, of the Slovakian Academy of Sciences, said that under centrally planned communist economies many were motivated to marry so that authorities would give them easier access to a new apartment.

But now some couples shy away from marriage since apartments are too expensive.

Many couples do live together, of course, but still choose not to get married.

Sociologist Agnes Utasi of the University of Szeged in southern Hungary said that cohabitation rather than marriage was becoming the norm in Hungary, a mostly Catholic country where the Church's influence nonetheless is limited.

"Society has grown much more accepting of this," Utasi said of couples living together without getting married. "It seems to better suit the faster pace of life where everything, including relationships, is uncertain."

Some couples decline to tie the knot, even when they have children.

In Bulgaria, the number of children born out of wedlock has quadrupled since the fall of communism, "from 10-12 percent before 1990 to 44 percent" last year, Yordan Kaltchev, a demography expert at the Bulgarian Statistics Institute, said.

The trend has also shown up in Hungary.

Bori has lived with her boyfriend for seven years and now they have a two-year old child, said the 27-year-old media researcher in Budapest, who did not want to give her last name.

"There are a lot of negative stereotypes about marriages, that most of them end in divorce," she said.

"Instead of legally chaining myself to somebody, as a modern woman I want to prove that with a career and a family, I can be happy in a relationship."

Fornication Nation? | Posted 9:53 AM

The readers of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal weigh in on the state of the Cohabitation Nation.

Good news in Loyoza v. Sanchez | Posted 9:39 AM

"A win for unmarried couples," reports Leonard Post at the National Law Journal. "Breaking new ground, the New Mexico Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that a claim for the loss of companionship of a partner is not limited to married couples," he writes.

You may now kiss the ass | Posted 2:59 PM

Here's an amusing dispatch on this rainy day:

Residents of India's southern city of Bangalore have married off two donkeys, in the hope that the ancient ritual will usher in good monsoon rains.

Though monsoons have hit southern India, Bangalore is still waiting for its first showers and residents decided to invoke the ritual - detailed in Hindu scriptures - after their prayers failed to deliver.

Two donkeys - the bride Ganga and the groom Varuna - tied the knot at a temple on the city outskirts to loud cheers of about 100 guests, who attended the ceremony.

Rains are crucial in India, as the majority of the country's population of over 1 billion depends on agriculture and farming.

The happy couple - who wagged their tails, oblivious to the commotion - were married off in a traditional Hindu ceremony, with the bride clad in a green silk sari with gold zari.

'Praying for rain'

Great attention was also paid to ritualistic details such as the perfect invitation card, the right wedding attire and the freshest flowers.

A traditional band entertained the guests, who sprinkled the newlyweds with flowers.

"We are praying for rains. We need rains, hope gods are pleased and it rains in Bangalore today," Manjual, one of the guests, told Reuters news agency.

Only at one point did the groom get restless: when his attendant tied the holy threads around his hind and fore legs.

The guests, each of whom contributed to the marriage expenses, were later treated to a traditional meal at the temple.

Before leaving the ceremony, everybody was hopeful it would start raining soon.

Meanwhile, the BBC's weather forecast suggested unbroken sunshine in Bangalore until Sunday at the earliest.

"I am living in sin. I admit it. My fiance and I live together..." | Posted 8:29 AM

My offer to Craig Newmark still stands, as his list continues to rock on. Yesterday I replaced our fax machine with one found on Craigslist. Total cost: $10.

Meanwhile, Abbie Ohanian, a complimentary copy of Unmarried to Each Other is in order for you, too. Read Abby's recent column in the Evansville Courier & Press.

New York Times Blog Beat | Posted 11:30 PM

I don't know how it's possible, but it's true. Mr. Jonathan Van Gieson is neither quoted nor cited in this New York Times story about blogs. You may or may not, however, find that he has been photographed at important blog society functions.

State of Our Unions report | Posted 11:02 PM

The National Marriage Project is out with their latest report. Here's the USA Today story.

Living Together Lyrics: Part II | Posted 9:00 AM

In honor of music blogger Mike Palmer, we continue with our series of song lyrics about cohabitation. Today, Johnny's Room, by The Bobs:

There are two things I can't stand
And one of them is your mom
What is just as bad is your dad
Why did we have to come?
This is the Eighties, it should be understood
That we sleep together

We've been together for a month now
Why are they so uptight?
When they invited us to dinner
I didn't know it meant "spend the night"
I helped with dishes
Your mother told me all about when you were small
And then she said:

Before it gets too late I'll show you where
you'll sleep tonight
You'll share a room with Johnny
(Repeat)

Over B and B, we watched TV
Me and you and your mom and dad
When the news came on, your dad yawned
And said "Come on, dear, let's go to bed"
We stayed on the couch there
And then your dad came downstairs and said
"Hey, kids, let's go!"

I bumped my head getting into bed
In Johnny's lower bunk
I couldn't sleep, 'cause the little creep
Snored and his tennis shoes stunk
I listened to this fish tank
And the bubbles seemed to be saying to me:

Before it gets too late I'll show you where
you'll sleep tonight
You'll share a room with Johnny
(Repeat)

At two a.m. I couldn't help myself
I tiptoed down the hall to your door
But then your dad came out and said
"Where are you going?"
"I guess I lost my way to the bathroom"

Before it gets too late I'll show you where
you'll sleep tonight
You'll share a room with Johnny
(Repeat)

[Previous installments in this series: Let's Live Together, by Robbie Fulks.]

The mention of cohabitation | Posted 9:02 PM

If it wasn't for Lockhart Steele, I wouldn't be reading things like this, which inspire me to do things like this, which lead me to find cool things like this. Best entry:

More [marriage] prep lessons

* Mortgaging your future to pay for a wedding is not considered
abnormal (but what people spend in Chicago is ridiculous!)

* The mention of pre-marital sex, contraception and cohabitation
makes some couples/individuals shift around uncomfortably in their
seats.

A well planned life | Posted 11:22 PM

Not sure what to make of this joke floating around the internet:

> Two women met for the first time since graduating from high
> school. One asked the other, "You were always so organized in
> school, did you manage to live a well planned life?" "Oh
> yes," said her friend. "My first marriage was to a
> millionaire; my second marriage was to an actor; my third
> marriage was to a preacher; and now I'm married to an
> undertaker." Her friend asked, "What do those marriages have
> to do with a well planned life?" "One for the money, two for
> the show, three to get ready, and four to go."

"The phrase has a kind of understated poetry" | Posted 1:02 AM

Two interesting pieces online: "Why Marriage? The tie that binds need not be legal" by Richard Taylor and "The institution of marriage is under attack? That's fine with me" by Ed Weathers. Weathers writes:

I live with a woman who is not my wife. Her name is Gail. We share the same bed, and occasionally we make love to each other. We have been doing this for 17 years. At least once a week, Gail and I look at each other, shake our heads, reach out to hold hands, smile and say how lucky we are to be living such a pleasant life. Honestly. We do. You can ask her.

People use different terms for the way Gail and I live: cohabitation, living in sin, fornication. I call it simply “living together,” because that’s what it is, and the phrase has a kind of understated poetry: We live, and we get to do it together.

"The marriage revolution is already underway" | Posted 2:53 PM

E.J. Graff writes in The Boston Globe:

[P]olls show that Americans increasingly believe that it's only fair to give same-sex partners the legal tools to care for one another. That's true in no small part because, for all the apocalyptic rhetoric employed against same-sex unions, lesbian and gay couples fit easily into the contemporary Western philosophy of marriage that has evolved over the last century.

In 1965, contraception became legal nationwide, after 75 years of ferocious opposition by forces ranging from the Catholic church (which called it ''the crime against nature'') to Theodore Roosevelt (who declared it the equivalent of polygamy). Today, Americans have come to see the purpose of sex as intimacy, not just making babies. And after even nastier battles over laws governing divorce and remarriage, most of us now believe that shared love rather than joint labor is what makes and unmakes a marriage. Finally, our laws now consider men and women to be formally equal in marriage. This last point raises a powerful question: If gender discrimination has no place within marriage, why should it exist at marriage's entryway?

When full marriage rights for same-sex couples arrive here in the United States, it will be just another incremental step in the ongoing transformation of marriage into an egalitarian institution based on love. Or to put it another way, same-sex couples are following, not leading, changes in our marriage law.

.... No one knows if such victories would provoke ''the mother of all cultural battles,'' as Stanley Kurtz put it recently in The National Review Online, or whether most people will yawn and keep watching ''Will and Grace.'' Either way, the most important result of gender-neutralizing marriage law, the activists like to say, is ''that the sky will not fall''-and heterosexual couples will see that their marriages are not mysteriously drained of force because the two girls next door are married too.

Don't give the North Dakota lawmakers any ideas | Posted 9:40 PM

In Malaysia, you can be fined for holding hands with your partner.

"Clearing the air on cohabitation" | Posted 7:18 PM

For the record, Ryan Bakken is neither in favor of cohabitation nor opposed to it. He's simply a really funny writer who knows a great topic when he sees one.

Clarification of purpose | Posted 11:14 PM

What's a cohabiting blogger to do when his blog gets more traffic from people searching for information about "nude weddings" than cohabitation? For the record, we don't provide information on bikini waxing in Marin County either.