Wanting a Child Without a Firm Commitment to the Partner: Interpretations and Implications of a Common Behaviour Pattern among Norwegian Cohabitants

Further knowledge of combined birth and marriage intentions among cohabiting couples will improve our understanding of the nature of consensual unions and be important from a policy perspective. According to Norwegian surveys from 1988 and 1996, about 1/3 of the births to cohabiting couples are mistimed. Among the remainder, between 1/2 and 3/4 are to couples who at least have no intention to marry within the next couple of years. The most radical estimate, based on the most recent survey, is that there are three equally large categories of births to cohabiting couples: mistimed births, intended births to couples planning marriage, and intended births to couples with no marriage plans whatever. The 1996 survey also revealed that a clear majority of these couples who appear to want a child without planning marriage, explain this attitude partly by the less easy dissolution of a marriage. In other words, their consensual union is indeed considered different from marriage in terms of commitment and stability and they may have concerns about the quality of the relationship. There were weak indications that cohabitants with an intended birth in the absence of marriage plans were less likely than others to consider a parental break-up to be very deleterious for the child.