WEDNESDAY, May 28, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- When it's limited to the future husband, premarital sex doesn't increase the risk of divorce for women.
That's what researchers from Western Washington University found, whose study appears in the May issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Women who are committed to one relationship, who have both premarital sex and cohabit only with the man they eventually marry, don't have higher divorce rates than women who abstain from premarital sex and cohabitation, the study found.
For these women, premarital sex and cohabiting are simply part of the process of developing a long-term, committed relationship.
The finding offers a new perspective on the long-held belief that cohabitation and premarital sex are strong predictors of divorce for women.
In his study, sociologist Jay Teachman queried women who took part in the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. He found that fewer than 18 percent of them reported refraining from premarital sex and cohabitation before marriage.
Because the majority of the women said they did have premarital sex and cohabitate before marriage, that sequence has become an acceptable part of the path to marriage, Teachman suggests.
The study findings don't support the common belief that people who live together aren't committed to marriage or that cohabiting reduces a person's commitment to marriage, the author notes.
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