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He says, she says: Study shows that men and women view living together very differently
ANN ARBOR, February 2011: More couples are living together than ever before, but the reasons men give for cohabiting – and the concerns they express about it – differ markedly from women’s, a new study shows.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Family Issues, is based on in-depth personal interviews and focus group sessions with 192 young people in their late twenties. Half the participants were men, half were women, and there were equal numbers of white, Black, and Hispanic participants.
Topics included: positive and negative aspects of cohabitation, reasons couples might decide to move in together rather than date or marry, reasons not to cohabit, and the kinds of changes that might occur when a couple first moves in together.
“Men and women expressed very different expectations for cohabiting relationships,” says Pamela Smock, a sociologist who directs the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, part of the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “We found that responses varied by gender much more than they did by race or ethnicity, suggesting a substantial gender gap in the perceived role of cohabitation in the union formation process.”
Smock conducted the study with Penelope Huang of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, Wendy Manning of Bowling Green State University, and Cara Bergstrom-Lynch of East Connecticut State University. The research was supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Overall, three key reasons for living together emerged: wanting to spend more time with one’s partner, wanting to share life’s financial burdens, and wanting to test compatibility. But the way men and women talked about these three broad reasons was very different.
Women volunteered “love” as a reason to live together three times as often as men did, while men cited “sex” as a reason to live together four times as often as women did.
Both men and women saw cohabitation as a temporary state in which to gauge compatibility, but major gender differences emerged in the underlying goals of living together. Women saw it as a transitional arrangement preceding marriage, while men tended to see it as a convenient, low-risk way to see if a relationship had longer-term potential, using terms like “test drive” to describe the arrangement.
But the strongest gender differences emerged in the perceived disadvantages of cohabitation. Women believed that living together meant less commitment and legitimacy than marriage, while men saw the greatest disadvantage as a limitation on their freedom.
Despite the gender mismatches in motives and expectations, Smock notes that young adults appear to see cohabitation as an expected part of life. “Ultimately, the clearest message was that living together is very much taken for granted. As a result, the upward climb in the proportion of young adults who cohabit is likely to continue for some time.”
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Estudio revela que los hombres y las mujeres tienen percepciones muy diferentes de la cohabitación
ANN ARBOR, febrero del 2011: Más parejas viven juntas ahora que antes, pero las razones que los hombres dan para la cohabitación, y las preocupaciones que expresan sobre ella, difieren notablemente de las de las mujeres, según revela un nuevo estudio.
La investigaciónn que se publicará en la revista Journal of Family Issues, se sustenta en entrevistas personales en profundidad y sesiones de grupos de enfoque en las que participaron 192 personas con edades entre 25 y 30 años. La mitad de los participantes eran hombres, la mitad mujeres, y hubo números iguales de blancos, negros e hispanos.
Los asuntos discutidos incluyeron los aspectos positivos y negativos de la cohabitación, las razones por las cuales las parejas deciden vivir juntos en lugar de simplemente verse en citas o de casarse, las razones para no cohabitar, y los tipos de cambio que pueden ocurrir cuando un hombre y una mujer se mudan por primera vez para vivir juntos.
“Los hombres y las mujeres expresaron expectativas muy diferentes para la relación de cohabitación”, dijo Pamela Smock, una socióloga que dirige el Centro de Estudios de Población de la Universidad de Michigan, que es parte del Instituto de Investigación Social (ISR) de la UM . “Encontramos que las respuestas varían por género mucho más que lo variado por grupo étnico o racial, lo cual sugiere una sustancial brecha por géneros en cómo se percibe el papel de la cohabitación en el proceso de formación de una unión”.
Smock llevó a cabo el estudio con Penélope Huang, del Colegio Hastings de Leyes en la Universidad de California; Wendy Manning de la Universidad estatal Bowling Green, y Clara Bergstrom Lynch, de la Universidad estatal del Este de Connecticut. La investigación tuvo el apoyo de donaciones del Instituto Nacional Eunice Kennedy Shriver de Salud Infantil y Desarrollo Humano.
En términos generales emergieron tres razones clave para vivir juntos: que la persona quiere pasar más tiempo con su pareja; que se busca compartir la carga financiera de la vida, y que se desea poner a prueba la compatibilidad. Pero la forma en que los hombres y las mujeres hablaron acerca de estas tres razones amplias fue muy diferente.
Las mujeres mencionaron el “amor” como una razón para vivir juntos tres veces más a menudo que los hombres, en tanto que los hombres mencionaron el “sexo” como una razón para vivir juntos cuatro veces más que la referencia hecha por las mujeres.
Ambos, hombres y mujeres, ven la cohabitación como una situación temporal que sirve para medir la compatibilidad, pero emergieron grandes diferencias por género en las metas subyacentes de la cohabitación. Las mujeres la ven como un arreglo de transición antes del matrimonio en tanto que los hombres tienden a verla como una manera conveniente y con poco riesgo de determinar si la relación tiene un potencial de plazo más largo y usaron términos como “una vuelta de prueba” para describir el arreglo.
Pero las diferencias más grandes por género emergieron en las desventajas que se perciben en la cohabitación. Las mujeres creen que vivir juntos significa un compromiso menor y menos legitimidad que el matrimonio, en tanto que los hombres ven la mayor desventaja en el límite a su libertad.
A pesar de los desencuentros en motivos y expectativas, Smock señala que los adultos jóvenes, al parecer, ven la cohabitación como algo que puede esperarse en la vida.
“En última instancia el mensaje más claro fue que el vivir juntos, en gran medida, se toma como algo que ha de ocurrir. Como resultado es posible que continúe por un tiempo el aumento de la proporción de adultos jóvenes que cohabitan”, añadió.
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