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Inventing Tradition: Cohabitation and Common Law Marriage

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Reinventing Couples

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life ((PSFL))

Abstract

This chapter uses the case study of cohabitation to further examine the invention of tradition in family practice. Cohabitation, until quite recently both rare and socially deviant, is now widespread and generally seen as entirely normal. This rapid change depended on the invention of common law marriage and the creation of an equally invented academic history of cohabitation. Rather than a constant struggle in ‘experiments in living’, cohabitants found legitimacy and normalcy through invented tradition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Unless indicated otherwise, interview quotations are taken from this project.

  2. 2.

    Ninety thousand were same-sex households (nearly 3 per cent of cohabiting couples).

  3. 3.

    Although pre-marital sex was tolerated for ‘serious’ couples, especially when marriage was delayed, and it seems that in the 1930s and 1950s around 16 per cent of brides were pregnant on their wedding day.

  4. 4.

    Nearly all remaining missing couples could be accounted for through migration, misspellings, and so on.

  5. 5.

    In a subsequent larger sample no marriage could be traced for 3.6 per cent of couples (which does not mean that they didn’t marry).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK

    Julia Carter

  2. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK

    Simon Duncan

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  1. Julia Carter
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  2. Simon Duncan
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Carter, J., Duncan, S. (2018). Inventing Tradition: Cohabitation and Common Law Marriage. In: Reinventing Couples. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58961-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58961-3_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58960-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58961-3

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