(Australia-NewsWire.Com, April 20, 2013 ) Victoria, Australia -- More and more women are choosing to live when their male partners before marriage, according to a new study government study. More of those relationships are also last longer, says the study that tracked the continuing climb of cohabitation within the United States.
Nearly half of all women in what researchers call “first unions” moved in with no wedding vows according to the research numbers taken from 2006 and 2010. That number is up 5%, from 43% to 48% since 2010. It has also climbed 14% since 1995.
Nearly 40% of said relationships have become marriages three years, with about 32% continuing to cohabitate. That phenomenon suggests that an important role for arrangements once known as “shacking up” says one researcher who has been working on the data.
“It’s becoming more acceptable to be in a long-term, committed relationship without a legal document,” says Pamela J. Smock, director and research professor at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.
According to the numbers, one-in-four women ages 15 to 44 within the United States have lived with a man, and by the time they are 30, the ratio moves upward to three-in-four.
“The question becomes not who cohabits, but who doesn’t?” Smock says.
The survey has relied on information from over 12,000 women interviewed in the four-year span as part of the National Survey of Family Growth, along with data from previous 1995-2002 reports.
Still, it does not take figures to prove living together has become a standard in relationship milestones, according to Melissa Melms of Hoboken, New Jersey.
“It was definitely a no-brainer for me. It was always something I planned to do,” said Melms, a blogger wrote about the move -- and the couple’s subsequent engagement -- in her Smitten column for Glamour.com.
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