Living together no longer 'playing house' - USATODAY.com
• The odds of divorce among women who married their only cohabiting partner were 28% lower than among women who never cohabited before marriage, according to sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
• Divorce rates for those who cohabit more than once are more than twice as high as for women who cohabited only with their eventual husbands, says Lichter's study, to be published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in December.
• Cohabiting between a first and second marriage doesn't raise the risk of divorce — unless the woman brings a child into the marriage from a previous relationship. A man with a child from a previous relationship does not raise the likelihood of a second divorce, finds a study in the May Journal of Marriage and Family, in which Teachman analyzed findings on 655 women from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.
