Living together in Australia: Qualitative insights into a complex phenomenon

Abstract

This paper mines data from in-depth interviews on family formation with 115 women, men and couples of family-forming age in eastern Australia to examine aspects of the complex phenomenon of living together unmarried. Sixty-five percent of interviews yielded evidence of one or more such relationships entered over approximately a 20-year period. Informants had rarely made considered 'decisions' to cohabit. Moving in had rather just happened', often after couples were 'sort of living together anyway through regularly staying over with one another. What tended to be transitions rather than datable events were widely perceived to be 'natural progressions', and motives for them were typically more pragmatic than emotional. The notion of cohabitation as trial marriage did not resonate widely among cohabiters, but did appear to have aided increasing parental acceptance of the lifestyle. Non-cohabiters mostly cited religious beliefs, a desire not to offend parents or a view that by marrying directly they had shown greater commitment as reasons for not having lived together. Youthful entry to cohabiting relationships seems frequently to presage their dissolution as 'growing up' relationships in a climate that increasingly eschews serious family formation until some years later in life. Transitions to marriage, which remains a highly symbolic act of commitment despite being seen in some quarters as irrelevant, have a variety of triggers. Prominent among them are decisions to have children (notwithstanding widespread childbearing within cohabiting unions) and the age-old prerogative of a male to propose marriage as the mood takes him.