Gender And Cohabitation: Article Analysis

1. After reading the article He Says, She Says: Gender and Cohabitation, I feel I have a better understanding of gender and cohabitation. The main goal of this article was to explore the possibility of gendered meanings and motivations behind cohabitation among young adults. The authors were motivated to study gender and cohabitation because all that they did know about meanings and motives to cohabit were drawn from quantitative analyses of surveys and with close-ended attitudinal questions. As stated in the article, the motivation for why young adults are cohabiting was lacking. Therefore, decided to do a detailed exploration of how gender might condition motivations to cohabit.
2. The authors used two sources of qualitative data: focus groups and in-depth interviews. The focus groups give the opportunity to understand the world as seen by the target population in general, to discover new concepts, generate hypotheses, and understand broad social perceptions regarding motivations to cohabit. In-depth interviews of current cohabits provide more detail and insight, revealing individual rationales underlying decisions to cohabit. The …show more content…
Long-term women tend to experience more disadvantages than men from living with a partner. For women, cohabitation is seen as entailing less commitment and legitimacy than marriage. More times than none, women go into a cohabitating relationship expecting it to lead towards marriage. Women believe that cohabitating “affects their partner really not to make the commitment. “It’s just, you know that old adage, “why buy the cow if you get the milk for free” sort of stuff.” Many women in the focus groups felt this way. Women feel an injustice in the distribution of “rewards” in cohabitation. Where, men enjoy the rewards of a marriage-like relationship without having to fulfill their end of the bargain. A lot of men do perceive cohabitation as “free milk.” Women believe that only marriage renders a relationship socially