CULTURE WATCH : Less Future in Living Together?

The notion that marriages will last longer if people first live together to find out if they are compatible is wrong, according to research by two sociologists.

Attitudes registered in a 23-year study pointed to “the possibility that cohabitation weakens commitment to marriage as an institution,” said professors William G. Axinn of the University of Chicago and Arland Thornton of the University of Michigan.

The sociologists, writing in the August edition of the journal Demography, said the experience of setting up unmarried households “produces attitudes and values which increase the probability of divorce.”

Axinn, in an interview last week, said the study dealt primarily with the attitudes of young people and did not produce results on the rates of failed marriages. But he cited other studies showing the divorce rate for those who first live together is 50% to 100% higher than that for those who don’t.

The sociologists’ study covered 867 families of mothers and their children interviewed from 1962 to 1985.

Axinn said attitudes toward divorce affect whether a person moves in with a companion, while the experience of living together may have an equally strong influence on the willingness to split if a marriage doesn’t go well.

“Because cohabitation often is viewed as a trial relationship, it probably attracts people who are, on average, more accepting of the termination of intimate relationships,” the researchers wrote.