Saturday, August 24, 2002
Pastors keeping mum on the issue of cohabitation
A story released today by the Evansville Courier & Press reports that few religious ministers have the courage to risk offending people these days, said Scott Stanley of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver. Pastors are afraid that if they preach on cohabitation, many people will get mad and some will hit the exits.
"Pastors are getting very gun shy when it comes to issues of marriage, family and sex," he said. "Certainly, cohabitation would be right at the top of a list of these issues, along with premarital sex. They are so tired of getting beat up because they have hurt people's feelings.
"So they just give up and what you hear is silence from the church. All people are hearing are the 'Go!' signals from the media and the culture."
This silence seems to be having an effect, especially with women, according to a study by Stanley and his colleagues Sarah Whitton and Howard Markman.
The researchers found - as expected - that deeply religious men are much less likely to cohabitate before saying their vows. But, to their surprise, they learned that religious women are just as likely to move in before marriage as non-religious women.
"Truth is, a woman gains nothing" by cohabitating before marriage, said journalist Michael McManus, author of "Marriage Savers: Helping Your Friends and Family Stay Married." Whatever their rationalizations, these women "are just being fools. ... Too many women today are allowing themselves to be used as playmates," he said.
McManus is convinced most pastors simply do not know that 5 million unmarried Americans are living together. Pastors do not know that these women face higher levels of depression and lower levels of communication and commitment. They are more than 60 percent more likely to be assaulted, and their children are endangered, as well.
Data from the University of Wisconsin provide a painful bottom line: Couples who cohabit before marriage increase their odds of divorce by 50 percent. Researchers found that only 15 out of every 100 cohabitating couples were married after a decade.
The goal is not to attack couples with these numbers, said McManus. The goal is to warn them and to offer them mentors, in the form of married couples who understand the challenges that are ahead. The church needs to reach out to young people while they are dating, before the pressures built to live together. Parents need this information, too.
