A study on the impact of cohabitation among undergraduate students in kampla international university-western campus.

Abstract

Cohabitation is when people live together in an emotional and or physically intimate relationship. The West Encyclopedia of American Law defines the term as couples who are not married while Abubakar et al., (2008) defines cohabitation as simply the act of a man and woman living together and having a sexual relationship without being married. Prior to 1970, cohabitation was illegal and even considered as a taboo in most states (Popenoe et al., 1999). Today, the practice has become common worldwide. In the United States, cohabitating couples account for 5.5 million households (A Few Facts on Cohabitation- (2001). The trend has also increased rapidly in majority of the higher institute of learning, reason being the increase in the number of undergraduate students and the inability of the tertiary institutions in expanding and building new hostels which has forced several students to look for accommodation outside the campus. This has led to the emergence of an unacceptable trend in most of the universities in which male and female students cohabit in the same room. Some call it campus marriage but it would rather be called “cohabitation” among students, since it is an indecent act perpetuated off campus (Abubakar et al., 2008).Popenoe and Whitehead (2002) asserted that what makes cohabitation so significant is not only its prevalence but also its widespread and popular acceptance. They went further to say that in recent students representational survey, nearly 66% of high school senior boys and 61% of the girls indicated that they agreed or mostly agreed with the statement claiming that it is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they can really get along. Yet, cohabitation prior to marriage has been consistently associated with poorer marital communication quality, lower marital satisfaction and higher levels of domestic violence (Clarkberg, M, Ross, M. Stoltenberg and Linda J. W.1995).