Cohabitation and births outside marriage after 1970: A rapidly evolving phenomenon

Abstract

This chapter provides a new review of the trends in the prevalence of cohabitation and the incidence of births outside marriage, briefly tracing their historical development — and appraising the accuracy and completeness of the available early statistical information — as background to the momentous changes which accelerated from relatively low levels from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Not only was there a rapid increase at that point in both cohabitation and childbearing outside marriage, but also in other demographic series reflecting sexual behaviour and alternative living arrangements, such as lone parenthood, divorce, premarital cohabitation, and so on, which, collectively, has been termed ‘The Second Demographic Transition’ by demographers, hypothesizing that the explosion in each of these different measures has each formed part of an overall phenomenon which has shared common causes.