Thomas K. Johnson erwähnt in seinem wertvollen Werk “Natural Law Ethics” verschiedene Studien von David G. Myers, einem weltbekannten Sozialpsychologen. Pikante Details: Die Foschungen zeigen eindeutig, dass das Zusammenleben vor der Heirat die Scheidungswahrscheinlichkeit massiv erhöht. Ganz im Gegensatz zum gesellschaftlichen Konsens “Man muss erst zusammenleben und sehen, ob man zusammenpasst”, zeigen die Fakten ein komplett anderes Bild.
Alas, the myth crumbles. Most cohabitations break up before marriage. In 1995, only 10 percent of 15–to 44-year-old women reported that their first cohabitation was still intact. But what about those who, after a trial marriage, decide to marry? Ten recent studies concur that couples who cohabit with their spouses-to-be have higher divorce rates than those who don’t.
Myers fügt hinzu: Besonders die Frauen haben einen hohen Preis für die höhere Unverbindlichkeit gezahlt.
Women, especially, have paid a price for replacing marriage with cohabitation. Over their lifetimes, women have tended to work and earn less. Thus they have more to lose by replacing a legal partnership with a no-strings attached relationship. Upon separation or death, cohabitees have limited rights to each other’s accumulated assets. The cohabitation revolution has therefore not supported women’s quest for economic parity with men. Perhaps due to their relative youth, lesser education, greater poverty and the presence of stepchildren, female cohabitees are also much more likely than married women to be victims of domestic violence.
Hier geht es zu einem kürzeren Aufsatz von Thomas K. Johnson “Marriage, Sex and Science”.
