Cohabitation = Marriage ?

           Do you know the meaning of cohabitation? Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married but lived together in an intimate relationship, particularly an emotional and sexually intimate, on a long-term or permanent basis (definition from Wikipedia). The figure of cohabitation increased obviously in this few years and it has become a common pattern or life style in western world for instance United State and America.

          There was an official figures from Office for National Statics (ONS) showed that the fastest growing type of family in United Kingdom (UK) are people who are living together without marriage. The number of people who cohabited has doubled up to 5.9 millions since year 1996 especially for the couple from 35 years old to 44 years old. This may related to people nowadays prefer late marriage and increasing age at marriage.

          In this globalization era, most of the youngsters felt that cohabitation is benefit for themselves. They are open-minded and feel free from custom,religion or even society. More and more couples are simply packing their things and move in to live together. They want to have a trial that live intimately with their partner to avoid bad marriage. Cohabited couples felt that it is more convenient and economic beneficial especially in hard financial time. In their opinion, they can save the money for wedding preparation or even divorce. Therefore, couples nowadays dare to take the challenge to cohabit without any promise of marriage.

         Apart from that, ethnic disadvantages also contained in cohabitation too. Domestic partnership without marriage can lead to unstable environment for child's development if cohabited couples have their own child. It is mistaken to have a concept that cohabited couple have legal right as married couple when they having a child. Besides, both side of them will think like "It is doesn't matter for what is happening since we are not married". This is an irresponsible behaviour and it is even serious if they have their own children.

         Cohabitation issue had been discussed for this century. In a nutshell, different countries has different view on this issue according to their own culture. Cohabitation is accepted by western world who has open-minded thinking while it is still take as illegal for marriage rights in eastern countries. For example, In Califonia, a family can be formed without an official marriage while in Asian countries like Malaysia, a pair of parent must have official marriage to form a family. Cohabitation perhaps cannot be accepted by certain amount of people, but can you accept it?