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Notes from a lecture given by Professor Adrian Thatcher at the FLAME Annual meeting, Leicester, Saturday 15th March 2003
The big divide: - 'pre-nuptial' and 'non-nuptial' cohabitation
A basic distinction must first be made between people who intend marriage and live together first, and people who live together with no intention of marriage. Since the average age of first marriages is now 30.5 years for men, and 28.2 years for women, it is not surprising that more people live together first.
In many countries more people enter marriages from cohabitation than from the single state. In the UK, by the late 90's about 70% of first-time marrying couples lived together first.
Cohabitors are as likely to return to singleness as to enter marriage. In the early 90's about as many cohabitees broke up as went on to marry.
Cohabitation has weakened the connection between marriage and parenthood since the 1970's. When an unmarried couple conceived in the 60's, they generally married. In the early 70's when an unmarried couple conceived they generally either married or had an abortion. In the late 70's and early 80's an unmarried couple upon conception opted increasingly for an abortion or an illegitimate birth. The 90's has seen a confirmation of this trend. Cohabitation is therefore 'inextricably linked' both to the decline of marriage and the increase in childbearing outside it.
Some people choose cohabitation as an alternative to marriage, not as a preparation for it.
'Trial marriages' are unlikely to work. Some cohabitors are trying out whether they can bear living with someone else - the weeding hypothesis
Men, in particular, are likely to be less committed to the female partners they live with, and much less committed than women to any children of the partnership.
Cohabitors with children are very likely to split up. Work done in Britain for the Research Centre on Micro-social Change (1997) concluded 'that direct comparison between first children born in a cohabitation and those born in a marriage shows that the former are much more likely to end up with only one parent. Starting from the birth of the first child, half of the cohabiting parents have separated within ten years, compared with only an eighth of parents who were marred before the baby was born.'
Children raised by cohabiting couples are likely to be worse off than children raised by married parents. Robert Wheelan's study, based on British data in the 1980's showed that children of cohabiting parents were 20 times more likely to be subject to child abuse.
The extent of cohabitation may reinforce the belief that all intimate relationships are fragile and transient. People who live together with their partner before they marry value fidelity almost as much as married people do.
Betrothal in the Bible: There are 5 cases of couples becoming married in the Bible by being betrothed first. They are Rebecca and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob, Zipporah and Moses, Sarah and Tobias, and Mary and Joseph. Recovering the place of betrothal in New Testament theology: St Paul compares the Corinthian church to a bride betrothed but not yet presented to Christ her 'true and only husband' (2 Corinthians 11: 2,3). An adequate understanding of the narrative of Jesus with the woman at the well (John 4) becomes achievable once forgotten betrothal practice is recovered and built into it.
2 ceremonies - SPOUSALS & NUPTIALS
spousals = matrimonium initiatum:
Nuptials = matrimonium ratum
spousals + sexual intercourse = matrimonium presumptum
nuptials + sexual intercourse = matrimonium consummatum
2 sets of vows (future and present)
Spousal vows were in the future tense = de futuro
Nuptial vows were in the present tense = de presenti
Make the spousal vows a public rite
Restore the marriage service to its earlier position
Offer a genuine rite of passage
A challenge to cohabiting couples - are they pre-nuptial or non nuptial?
The recovery of marriage entry as a process. When it 'begins' is like asking when faith begins.
The re-examination of consent and consummation. Both derive from medieval disputes.
The extension of the sacramental theology of marriage to the betrothed - overcoming the pastoral tragedy of exclusion.
© Adrian Thatcher March 2003 and 2005
This topic is dealt with more fully in Adrian Thatcher's new book
Living Together & Christian Ethics.
Published by Cambridge University Press (2002)
Price £15.95
A full text of the lecture from the AGM is available from the editor on request.