Independent Perspective News

(...)

In 1960 only 7% of Argentine couples weren't married; in 1991 the percentage grew to 18%. In the city of Buenos Aires, the phenomenon has been even more explosive: 1,5% in 1960 and 21% in 2001, according to the fresh data offered by the last census.

(..)

There has been a rise of what is called "consensual couples": the crisis of the institutions has also reached matrimony. Now couples relate according to a different contract, one that's renewed every day and which does not include a paper handed in by the State. "Some believe this implies a lack of commitment, but maintaining a relationship like this is much harder than keeping tied to somebody else by a public obligation" states sociologist Susana Torrado.

(...)

Let it be clear: the institution of marriage is in a crisis, the will to live with a stable partner is not. The tendency to live in a couple has been constant since more than 100 years ago. It's only the institutional seal to the relationship what is being rejected. Less and less couples get legally married, and, among them, less and less go to church to consummate their union.

(...)

On January 22, The Observer exposed the tendency in Britain: "There are more happily single couples than ever before", was the headline. According to the National Statistics Office, the proportion of unmarried women between 18 and 49 years old who live with their couples has risen from 3% in 1979 to 16% in 2001.

(...)

According to a national poll in 2000, in the U.S. there are 9,7 million people cohabiting with their couples without getting married, and among them 41% of women between 15 and 44. (...) The proportion of people who decide to live together without getting married grew 72% during the last decade and multiplied by ten since 1960 (...) Of course, not everybody opposes marriage: over there, 75% of couples plan to marry some day.

(...)

In the apostolic exhortation "Familiaris Consortio", Juan Pablo II enumerates the disadvantages of cohabitation without marriage: loss of the religious sense of matrimony, destruction of the concept of family, attenuation of the sense of fidelity, affirmation of selfishness.