4.3 Premarital cohabitation: revised 3

Cohabitation, becomes more and more popular recently. Many people stand against this kind of life style because of  being worry about their rights after having cohabitation. They said that when the problem of finance or estate occurs, people taking cohabitation would be helpless than people in marriages. So I found a book , which was written by Mireille Dewevre Fourcadeto, to refute these thoughts. Mireille Dewevre Fourcadeto was a professor of French Le Havre University, and he had done so much studies about cohabitation from Ancient Roman to Modern France. This book named "Cohabitation" talked about how to solve common problems of cohabitation and breaking many misunderstanding concepts by mentioning many set laws. And the translator of this book, hsu lien-kao, made many efforts on in the process of translating. He said that he tried to interpret the book much more carefully by studying The Six Laws so hard and asking famous jurists. 
 Some people questioned that how the two people separate their belongings without the indemnification of law if the relationship was broken. This question could be answered in page 26 of "Cohabitation", " In number 1382 terms of the Civil Law, it indicated clearly that if someone cause others' damages, this kind of fact could force this person to be responsible for compensating others' damage." It explained that if our rights were invaded in cohabitation relationship, we could use laws to protect ourselves as well. And the other people were worried about that cohabitation was not in the restriction of law so people who take cohabitation were kind of being not indecent. This nonsense could be broken in page 69, "In the total compilation of laws, only having sex consistently couldn't be admitted as cohabitation. "
 Cohabitation is just a way to live a life , not a way to run away from the control of laws or challenge the society deliberately. It is just a concept which has been misunderstood for a long time.  In fact,the book I mentioned above was standing on a relatively neutral position , so it didn't value anything or make subjective comments to blame on anyone. All the author of this book and me were just trying to use those laws related to cohabitation to correct the misunderstandings. So, stop fussing and take a deeper look on what you were blaming on, maybe it was just read in a wrong way.

5.1 Premarital cohabitation: annotation 4

  After the issue of cohabitation had raised, many economists and sociologists started to discuss how this phenomenon influence our society. To prove that cohabitation has positive effects and origins in the students group, I found a report which was researched and written by Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, senior economist and senior writer, respectively, of the Social & Demographic Trends project of the Pew Research Center.

  At the beginning of the report , it used a graph to summarize its points.

We can that the cohabitors of those who don't have a college degrees earn less money than those married ones, while the cohabitors of those who have a college degrees earn more than those married ones. I figured out that whether the cohabitors have college degrees or not, they choose cohabitation because of the cost of marriage is too high to undertake, the difference between these two groups was that those who don't have college degrees may be forced to choose cohabitation. It seemed like cohabitation could be kind of negative that poverty lead to cohabitation, but if we see deeper, we could found out that for those who received education, cohabitation could present a greater economic status. Below this graph, the authors also concluded,"This report finds that greater economic well-being is associated with cohabitation for adults with college degrees, but not for those without college degrees. " The education becomes widespread these years, so we could assume that this effect on higher academic degrees would spread widely with the education. 

  Further more, cohabitation could present part of women's independence. I found an article mentioned that Cherlin (1992), remarked,"Women's new-found financial independence and the spread of more individual-centered values eventually contributed to the instability of marriage. Changes in social standards meant that people no longer felt as obligated to remain in unhappy marriages. Financial independence meant that they did not have to. Besides increasing the divorce rate, changes in postwar economics and ideas caused the rise in delayed marriage and cohabitation." And Gary Becker (1981) also argued,"The single most important factor underlying social transformation related to lower fertility, divorce, and cohabitation has been the rise in the earning power of women. An essential change in the gender division of labor has followed women's increased participation in the waged labor force. This change has reduced the economic advantages and necessity of marriage, and consequently, divorce rates have increased and marriage rates have decreased. The reduced benefits of marriage and the specter of marital instability have made nonmarriage more attractive. Reduction in the expected economic gains from marriage has made men and women more hesitant to enter marital unions, but a shared household still offers economic advantages. Cohabitations make good sense because they capitalize on the benefits of a shared household without the economic risks associated with marriage." We can conclude that the cost of marriage was higher than its benefits sometimes. Especially when the concept of individual independence had raised up , people prefer to show their financial independence through not getting married, which seems to be more independent to make a living on their own.

Sources:
1.Living Together: The Economics of Cohabitation
BY RICHARD FRY AND D’VERA COHN
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/06/27/living-together-the-economics-of-cohabitation/
2.Cohabitation - Reasons For Cohabitation
http://family.jrank.org/pages/275/Cohabitation-Reasons-Cohabitation.html

4.2 Premarital cohabitation: transciption

Okay, I'm Justine, and she is Joselin. We are going to talk about cohabitation. First one, I'm standing at the positive side. I made a photograph (correct: graph or chart). I think cohabitation has many positive meanings like KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER. Cohabitation provides a new way, a brand new way to know each other deeper.You can know his life hobby through cohabitation. And next one is (that) this cohabitation can make you two to FACE THE REAL LIFE. When you start to share your life, you have to learn to face more financial problems. Like, you can save your telephone charges, that(correct: which) is good, but you learn to share your air-conditioner charges because you're living together and you have to face many more problems in reality. Okay. And the third one is (that) all the cohabitations comes from one purpose: TEST IF HE OR SHE IS THE ONE. The one you can rely on him or her in the rest of life. How positive the meaning of cohabitation is.

Next one I'm going to talk about what cohabitation means legally. Cohabitation is a right of liberty that our laws allowed. And some people may say that you can't gain protection from our laws as same as in the marriage because the marriage has a paper(correct: a piece of paper), which means the law. But actually I found a book that writes(correct: said), "In number 1382 terms of the Civil Law, it indicated clearly that if someone cause others' damages, this kind of fact could force this person to be responsible for compensating others' damage." So, we can say that our laws have the ability to control this situation. That the laws can protect you ,you don't have to worry about if we take the cohabitation and we don't have the paper so that the laws can't protect you. That is not true. And we also can say that cohabitation provides a very good way for homosexual couples who can't have a marriage now, and the cohabitation can provide the feeling of home and family.

And next one is talking about WOMEN INDEPENDENCE. Why cohabitation came from women independence? In our conventional society, we depressed women for a very long time. When that day the women waked up, they tried to fight for their (right of) education. After having the education, they learned more and found out not only their right of education was taken away. There were still legal rights, social right, and economic status that they had been deprived. They still fought for legal fairness. We can found that recently we could choose children's last name, not just follow the tradition to use fathers' last names. So that, after all these (things), we could (also) found that women's economic status improved. The women didn't have to rely on marriage and their husband because they (already) have economic ability to make a living. Like "I don't have to marry someone to rely on him." We can say that cohabitation improved the social status of women. And we can found that sometimes someone would say,"When two people take the cohabitation, the Chasity of women would be valueless." They said that women's chasity is important. But actually, if we said that women is as same as men, then why don't we focus on the chasity of men? Okay ,and my part is over.