The post Why “Moving In” Is Replacing “Getting Married” for a Growing Number of Couples first appeared on Crafting Your Home.
Ask someone in their 20s or 30s what the natural next step after a serious relationship is, and “getting married” isn’t always the first answer anymore. Increasingly, it’s “moving in together” full stop, no ring required.
This isn’t a fringe lifestyle choice anymore. It’s a measurable, decades-long shift in how American couples build a life together, and the data behind it tells a pretty clear story.
The Numbers Have Been Moving in One Direction for Years
According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of U.S. Census and American Community Survey data, the share of adults ages 25 to 54 who were cohabiting more than doubled between 1990 and 2019, rising from 4 percent to 9 percent. Over that same period, the share of adults in that age group who were currently married dropped from 67 percent to 53 percent.
Zoom out to a lifetime view, and the shift looks even bigger. Pew’s analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth found that among adults ages 18 to 44, 59 percent have lived with an unmarried partner at some point, compared with 50 percent who have ever been married. Living together, in other words, has quietly become more common across a lifetime than marriage itself for this generation.
The trend hasn’t reversed in recent years, either. A more recent Pew analysis found the share of U.S. adults cohabiting with an unmarried partner ticked up from 6 percent to 7 percent between 2019 and 2023, even as overall marriage rates held roughly steady.
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Most Americans Have Stopped Seeing It as a Big Deal
Part of what’s driving the shift is a straightforward change in attitude: most Americans no longer think cohabitation requires a wedding ring to justify it.
Pew’s 2019 survey on marriage and cohabitation found that 69 percent of Americans said it’s acceptable for a couple to live together even if they have no plans to marry. That number climbs even higher among younger adults: 78 percent of adults under 30 said the same, compared with 65 percent of those ages 50 to 64.
The acceptance gap widens sharply when religion enters the picture. Among religiously unaffiliated adults, 90 percent said cohabitation without marriage plans is acceptable, compared with 47 percent of Black Protestants and 35 percent of white evangelical Protestants, according to the same survey. Political affiliation shows a similar split: 79 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults said cohabitation is acceptable without marriage plans, compared with 58 percent of Republicans and Republican leaders.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, personal experience shape’s opinion the most. Pew found that 89 percent of adults currently living with a partner said cohabitation without marriage plans is acceptable, a much higher share than among those who aren’t in that situation themselves.
The Old Fear About “Living Together First” Doesn’t Hold Up the Way It Used To
For decades, a popular belief lingered that couples who lived together before marriage were more likely to divorce the so-called “cohabitation effect eventually.” Newer research has complicated that idea considerably.
Arielle Kuperberg, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, published a widely cited 2014 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family examining this question directly. According to a research brief she prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families, Kuperberg found that once she controlled for the age at which a couple first moved in together rather than the age, they got married, the link between premarital cohabitation and divorce risk largely disappeared. Her research found that the stronger predictor was how old the couple was when they made their first serious commitment, whether that commitment was moving in together or getting married. Couples who committed to each other before age 23, married or not, faced a higher risk of splitting up later.
Kuperberg’s brief for the Council on Contemporary Families put it plainly: it isn’t cohabitation itself that raises divorce risk. It’s making a serious commitment of any kind before a couple has the life experience to choose a compatible partner and sustain a long-term relationship.
That’s a meaningfully different conclusion than the one that shaped public opinion for years, and it helps explain why moving in together no longer carries the same stigma, or the same perceived risk, that it once did.
Marriage Still Has an Edge in One Specific Area
None of this means cohabitation and marriage are interchangeable in every respect. Pew’s research also found that married adults report higher relationship satisfaction and trust in their partners than cohabiting adults.
That finding doesn’t necessarily mean marriage itself is the magic ingredient. It may simply reflect that, on average, cohabiting relationships include a wider range of situations: some couples living together as a step toward marriage, others as a long-term alternative, and others still figuring out what they want. Pew’s data captures that mix, not necessarily a verdict on which arrangement works better for any individual couple.
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What It All Adds Up To
Living together without marrying isn’t a phase couples are passing through anymore; it’s becoming one of the primary ways American relationships are built. The data shows rising numbers, shifting attitudes, and research increasingly undercutting the assumption that it’s a risky choice.
For a growing share of couples, moving in together isn’t a rebellion against marriage. It’s simply becoming the default first step with marriage, if it happens at all, arriving on a very different timeline than it used to.
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