By IANS,
Washington : Women who stay with several partners serially are less likely to marry than women who stick to a single partner. Even if they do, divorce rates are very high, finds a new study.
Daniel T. Lichter of Cornell University and Zhen Chao of Ohio State University used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to track the experiences of serial cohabiters, or women who have cohabited with more than one partner.
Results indicate that only a minority of cohabiting women (15 to 20 percent) were involved in multiple cohabitations. Also, serial cohabitations were overrepresented among economically disadvantaged groups, especially those with low income and education.
Serial cohabiters were less likely than couples who cohabited only once to end in marriage. If serial cohabiters did marry, divorce rates were very high – more than twice as high as for women who cohabited only with their eventual husbands, said a Cornell release.
“Understanding the myriad motivations of cohabiters may be more important than ever, especially if cyclical serial cohabiting couples with children have increased among recent cohorts as a percentage of all cohabitations,” Lichter noted.
This study was published in the November issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.