My husband enjoys telling people how he “proposed” marriage to me. Ronny was from Montreal but working in Toronto at the time. It was 1964. I was in my last undergrad year of university. After we’d dated for some months, he gave me his fraternity pin. My mother sat us down and said: “I don’t know how it is in Montreal, but in Toronto a fraternity pin is quite a serious step. If this is leading somewhere, I have to know well in advance, because the synagogue gets very booked up for June weddings.” Without even glancing my way, Ronny nodded briskly to my mother and declared, “Book the synagogue!”
On the surface, it wasn’t the most sentimental proposal in the world, but its deeper implications weren’t lost on me: Ronny’s “stepping up to the plate,” as he later put it, was a clear indication that his affections were more than transient, and he understood that being in love implied an adult commitment to permanent responsibilities. I still find that a very romantic concept.
Of course I know many Canadians—and most Quebecers, since their cohabitation rate is twice as high as in the rest of Canada—will find in this anecdote nothing but a quaintly archaic illustration of the Patriarchy, where women were chattel to be shifted from one owner—their parents—to the next, their husbands.
Theoretically, I can see that the optics of my generation’s attitude are unappealing in an age of complete female sexual liberation. But consider the practical alternative: serial loveless hook-ups, open-ended cohabitation, late marriage often based more on age-related anxiety than love. Is all that any better than the Fifties, when marriage was the only way forward for a serious developing romance?
I see no empirical evidence to suggest the situation is better, and plenty to suggest it is worse. I look at my children’s friends—especially the women—who are not yet married, but who have cohabited or still are cohabiting in their thirties—and happiness is not what I am seeing, but rather anxiety, lowered self-esteem, dismay at the dwindling stock of desirable marriage-minded men, and biological-clock panic.
And now comes along a study—from the ur-site of feminism, York University’s sociology department, of all places—to confirm my intuition that living together with no marriage commitment works against, rather than for, relationship happiness on a permanent basis. The Vanier Institute of the Family has just published a paper by Professor Anne-Marie Ambert, which overturns the received wisdom that “trial marriages” end in stronger real marriage. Amongst Ambert’s findings are that cohabiting relationships produce lower expectations of sexual fidelity, less ability to problem-solve, greater violence and higher approval of divorce. As cohabitation rates go up, she predicts a mounting social toll on Canadian welfare, education and mental health systems.
Ambert concludes: “If I were a young woman who wanted to get married and have children—which means by definition that I want to have a solid marriage—I would not cohabit before marriage or would cohabit only once I am engaged.” But, as the under-25 group is the most likely to adopt cohabitation rather than marriage, Ambert ruefully concedes she sees no prospect of her study reversing the trend.
Young people don’t consult studies for their sexual and marital mores. They follow the examples set by peers, Hollywood—and the course of least resistance. There has been no resistance lately from parents; unlike my mother, no (non-religious) boomer parent would ever dream of sitting her adult child’s suitor down to ask his intentions.
As for government, its policies send two mutually exclusive messages. On the one hand, the right to marriage for gays was legislated precisely because gay rights activists saw marriage as having a higher value than cohabitation or civil unions, and our government, uncomfortable with any “inequality” between citizens, concurred. But at the same time, governments and courts have for years been systematically destroying the legal and financial distinctions between marriage and cohabitation. It strikes me that Ambert’s research should help convince legislators to resolve this contradiction in favour of encouraging traditional marriage.
Although cohabitation is mainstream today, it was even in my era practiced by a daring avant-garde of “beatniks” and other social scofflaws. My plainspoken mother with only a high school education used to wonder: “Why would a man buy a cow if he can get the milk for free?” How quaint. But here we are 40 years later, and a sociologist with a PhD—in fancier language to be sure—asked the same question and came up with the same implied answer as my mother did: The grass not only seems, but actually is greener on the bought cow’s side of the fence.
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