The Edmonton Sun documents how cohabitation and living together are poor substitutes for marriage, especially when children are involved.
Licia Corbella writes (excerpt):
Couples have common-law relationships for a myriad of reasons — most of them terribly unromantic — and include convenience, being incapable of true commitment, waiting for someone better to come along or because they think they are being (yawn) oh, so original with their anti-establishment attitude.
****
“That piece of paper matters a lot because cohabitations are much less stable than marriages,” explains Ambert.
According to figures from StatsCan’s 1998 National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, 63% of children whose parents were living common-law had seen their parents split by age 10, compared with 14% of children of married couples.
In other words, common-law relationships are a whopping 450% more likely to split up than a marriage!