Cohabitation is a situation in which a couple who are not married live together. Cohabitation is on the increase especially in the west. Cohabitation has broad effects on the couples themselves, their offspring, to the social spectrum, and to the respective rights of the fathers, mothers, and children (not to mention the strong opposition of the religious sector). To illustrate, absence the sanction of marriage, it’s hard to draw up commitments and to enforce the responsibilities of the father to his children in case of separation. More so, separation of cohabitees adversely affects the child’s association of his kinship and lineage. Also, in a harsh society, a child out of cohabitation is likely to be teased and alienated. In addition, one can always deny fatherhood over a child, in order to walk off with the legal obligation to support.
Furthermore, cohabitation makes accentuating the rights of the cohabitees difficult. The likelihood of cheating of either party is so big, yet accountability is not clearly drawn unlike in marriages where responsibility and consequences are evidently established. Marriage lays down the rights of the spouses and provides for explicit means to redress such rights. Punishment in terms of imprisonment is available for offenses against marriage, while these are not provided for in cohabitation. Fidelity and loyalty are thus stiff to haul out in cohabitation.
Despite all of these downsides, cohabitation or living in, is still gaining popularity. Just about, people who favor cohabitation find it more suitable than marriage. It serves as the avenue to try relationships with someone, a trial and error program, where they can just end the relationship anytime they want to without the complicated legalities and technicalities and thus saves them from getting hooked forever to the wrong person!!
Let’s hear it from you. Would you opt to cohabitate/live-in?
Note: This is a repost. I wrote this article long time ago.