The Age of 'Shotgun Cohabitation'
A new report highlights the growing trend of unmarried parents living together with their children.
When young couples of the ’60s and ’70s thought about the future, their path forward was often clear: get married, move in, have babies. Two of the steps of that sequence swapped places decades ago—for the first time, in the mid-’90s, over half of all couples lived together before marriage. Now, researchers are finding that the order is again undergoing change: More and more Americans are first sharing a home, then having children. Marriage comes later, if at all.
A report by the Pew Research Center finds that 35 percent of all unmarried parents are now living together, up from 20 percent
