According to Geertje Else Wiersma in her book “Cohabitation, an alternative to marriage?”, 1983, she explains that the differences between cohabiting and married couples may contribute to the degree of individuation. “It seems that those who link marriage to greater security, stability, and self-fulfilment are the least individuated”, the author says (Wiersma, 1983, p.116). She then states that differences in social economic background hardly contribute to explaining individuation differences. However, Wiersma observes that “to be more individuated is certainly not an inherent trait of cohabiting couples. It can be found equally among married couples as long as certain dyadic conditions or characteristics pertain” (Wiersma, 1983, p.121). She reports that “everyone will create his or her own response to the tension of freedom and commitment that is inherent in couple intimacy, which is precisely the underlying theme of the study” (Wiersma, 1983, p.121).
In addition, Wiersma provides final observations about cohabiting couples by reflecting on the lifestyle in the context of societal changes. She clearly states the thesis statement that “cohabitation has proven to be one of the popular couple-responses to this decline in traditional marital expectations” (Wiersma, 1983, p.125). She generally recognizes that the notion of marriage is “a haven or a place for belonging is transmitted to baby-boom generation and the increase of rationality in the modern world and a diminishing of the mythical, the romantic, and the poetic” (Wiersma, 1983, p.123-124) to prove that the ratio of people who want to marry is declining. Furthermore, Wiersma explains the main difference between cohabiting and married couples “lies not in the fact that one is legally married and the other is not, rather in what they believe marriage has to offer in terms of security and stability, and in practical and legal conveniences” (Wiersma, 1983, p.128). Finally, the author states out that due to many things, such as styles, the sexual revolution and world-wide economic inflation are changing in the world, women and men make their own choice regarding their lifestyles.
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In my opinion, cohabitation cannot be an alternative to marrige. That's is because the rate of marrige is decreasing but it does not necessarity means that they don't want to get married, but that they have less chances to know each others on acount of their being busy so that a new business like arranged marriage or computer dating is flourishing very much, and because they need more stable correlation than before since they have more and more unsteadiness in this society.
However, cohabitation should be maintained in the society in order to keep the diversity of the society, which enables them to live freely and easily, and eventually encourage them to have more children.
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