Cohabitation typically involves a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend. While test driving marriage may seem like a good idea, research has shown otherwise.

“With contraception, sex could be, and was, separated from marriage. This severing resulted in… widespread cohabitation…Marriage is fundamentally a pre-political institution—not simply a creature of law—rooted in a natural union of a man and a woman that is ordered to family life and childbearing and childrearing. The political community has very important interests affected by this institution—it is a deeply integral element of the common good...” Christopher Wolfe, The Public Discourse

Statistics:

• Affect on Divorce
  Cohabitation actually increases the likelihood of divorce.

• Affect on Marriage
  Couples who cohabitate before marriage report lower marital satisfaction and commitment to their marriages.

• 50%
  Over 50% of people live together before marriage.

• 1,000%
  The number of cohabiting couples has increased 1,000% since 1960.

• 11x Less Likely
  Children with married moms and dads are 11 times less likely to be physically, sexually, and emotionally abused than when living with their mother and her boyfriend.

• 6x Less Likely
  Children with married moms and dads are 6 times less likely to be emotionally, physically, or educationally neglected than when living with their mother and her boyfriend.

  
  

See more ways that a married mom and dad benefit society.

Polyamory is a romantic group relationship involving whatever gender composition the participants find agreeable, while polygamy is typically one man with multiple wives. With the erosion of the understanding of marriage, these relationships are becoming more widespread.

Statistics and Quotes:

• 500,000
  There are an estimated 500,000 American polyamorous households.

• 500,000
  There are an estimated 500,000 polygamist relationships in the U.S.

• “There are many more single men in polygamous societies; polygamous societies have higher rates of violent crime.” – Christopher Kaczor

• “The West has moved from a cultural norm of intact married religious family life to, increasingly, a norm of a religious, sexually polymorphous, serial polygamy.” – Henry Potrykus, Patrick Fagan

• One prominent polygamist community in British Columbia, after the creation of same-sex marriage, proclaimed that there was now no principled basis for the state’s continued criminalization of polygamy.

• ​Brown v. Utah​
  In the case of Brown v. Utah, the reality TV family from “Sister Wives,” a judge claimed that portions of Utah’s restriction on polygamy was unconstitutional. The case is now on appeal.