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(EMAILWIRE.COM, March 28, 2009 ) Australia - More couples are living together before marriage than ever before, new social research in Australia has found, with the number rising from just three per cent of couples in the swinging sixties to nearly three quarters of all couples todayÂ…
An obvious choice to some, unthinkable to others – living with your partner out of wedlock has become commonplace in today’s world.
Many couples want to see exactly what they are getting themselves into before signing on the dotted line and others have no desire to get married, but just want to be living with the one they love. Now, it has become accepted and almost expected for couples to live together before tying the knot.
This state of affairs is a drastic shift from the swinging sixties, when very few couples were shacking up before marriage.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released new social trend statistics which reveal that the number of couples cohabiting has skyrocketed, with three-quarters of couples who married this century living together before tying the knot.
Over in the USA, less than 500,000 unmarried couples were cohabiting in 1960, according to the US Census. In fact, it was actually illegal in many states at the time. But by 2000, cohabitation had lost its outlaw status - and nine times as many people were doing it in America.
This ‘quarterly snapshot’ of society from the Australian Bureau of Statistics also shows that households have allocated ‘his and her’ chores.
Whilst women were found to do most of the indoor tasks, men spent more time outside drinking beer and pottering in their shedÂ…oopsÂ…I mean mowing laws and doing DIY.
The research found that women do almost twice as much of the housework as men, but men are getting better - between 1992 and 2006, the average time men spent on household work rose by an hour and 25 minutes to 18 hours and 20 minutes a week.
That sounds like an awful lot to me.
Despite many couples being reluctant to take that walk down the aisle without having seen what their partner is like to live with, relationship experts warn that there are hidden dangers in shacking up out of wedlock.
The most compelling and widespread argument against living together before marriage is that several researchers say it increases the risk of breaking up. The chance of divorce is far greater for married couples who lived together first, with surveys finding that they could be as much as 46 per cent more likely to split.
Experts also suggest that quality of life could be compromised by living together first. Annual rates of depression are more than three times higher and cohabiting women have been found to be more likely than married women to suffer physical and sexual abuse.
The other reason that these experts warn against cohabiting before marriage is that it may not lead to a wedding. Of course, many couples donÂ’t want that so this argument is irrelevant to them, but those that do may be disappointed.
After five to seven years, 21 per cent of most cohabitating couples have been found to be still living together without getting married. In a new study by marriage experts Popenoe and Whitehead, one of the top 10 reasons why men said that they are reluctant to get married at all is because they can simply live with a woman and enjoy the same benefits.
Make of that what you willÂ…
For more information on properties in Australia and the market in general, please visit http://australia.themovechannel.com/
-ENDS-
Notes to editors:
TheMoveChannel.com is a property website that was founded in 1999 as an online resource for buying, selling and learning about property. It now receives as many as 300,000 visits per month and advertises over 50,000 properties in nearly 90 countries, which are listed by over 500 partner organisations.
For further information as well as images and interview possibilities, please contact:
Dan Johnson
Managing Director
www.themovechannel.com
0207 952 7650
TheMoveChannel.com
Dan Johnson
020 7952 7650
dj@themovechannel.com 
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