Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. In France, as in other European countries, the age at first cohabiting union has risen over the past decades, as a result of longer school enrolment, structural economic changes, and new family norms. While the median age at first co-resident couple was This tendency is often referred to as a postponement of couple formation and as a part of a broader delay in the transition to adulthood.
This article argues, on the contrary, that couple formation has not been postponed but prolonged. In fact, age at first couple formation has remained stable across generations born since the mid-twentieth century in France. What are the different pathways into couple life, and how have these changed over time? In order to answer these questions, we use optimal matching methods to identify ideal typical trajectories and then logistic regressions in order to see how these relate to generational differences as well as sociodemographic characteristics.
We observe three traditional, three timeless and five new paths to couple life. The main historical change is the increasingly gradual nature of union formation, a trend that reflects a dual pattern.
Second, young people increasingly experience several relationships during youth: the different steps of couple formation are taken with different partners. We conclude that couple formation is not delayed per se ; it is rather the material and institutional formalization of unions that is put off for the future. We discuss the scientific and methodological implications of this finding. Young adults today settle in together at older ages than did former generations. This trend is clear from numerous European studies interested in the timing of union formation, which show an increase in the age at which men and women enter cohabitating relationships for the first time.
Whereas for the generation born in the s, the median age at first cohabitation was This article seeks to go beyond this general and well-known trend in order to examine the new pathways into couple life. This leads us, on the one hand, to consider the different stages of couple formation from starting a relationship to eventually marrying and, on the other hand, to take into account the complexity and reversibility of contemporary life course separation and couple re formation.
