More older couples are now ‘shacking up’
In many ways, the life that Karen Kanter and Stan Tobin share in Philadelphia sounds typical. Both 75, they happily see movies and plays together, visit children and grandchildren, and try new restaurants (but avoid sushi).
Tobin, an accountant who maintains a small tax practice, makes time for a monthly men’s group. A retired middle-school teacher, Kanter hustles between book and art appreciation groups while volunteering and writing a historical novel.
He supported her through a successful breast cancer treatment years ago. She has been prodding him about putting on pounds, so he has returned to Weight Watchers.
Careful about financial and legal arrangements, they co-own their city condo and a cottage in upstate New York.
She has his power of attorney and health-care proxy, and vice versa.
“We love each other and want to be together, and we’ve made the commitment to stay together until death parts us,” Kanter said.
But although they have been a couple since 2002 and have shared a home since 2004, they are not married. And among older adults, they have a lot of company.
The number of people over 50 in the U.S. who cohabit with an unmarried partner jumped 75 per cent from 2007 to 2016, the Pew Research Center reported last month — the highest increase in any age group.
“It was a striking finding,” said Renee Stepler, a Pew research analyst. “We often think of cohabiters as being young.”
Most still are. But the number of cohabiters over age 50 rose to four million from 2.3 million over the decade, Stepler found, and the number over age 65 doubled to about 900,000.
The trend partly reflects the size of the baby boom cohort, as well as its rising divorce rate. “Grey divorce” has roughly doubled among those 50-plus since the 1990s. Divorce leaves two people available for repartnering, of course; losing a spouse leaves one, and these days it tends to strike at older ages.
But attitudes have shifted, too. “People who’ve divorced have a more expansive view of what relationships are like,” said Deborah Carr, the Rutgers University sociologist who served as chairwoman of the Population Association panel.
“The whole idea of marriage as the ideal starts to fade, and personal happiness becomes more important.”
Of course, the boomers pretty much invented widespread premarital cohabitation while in their 20s and 30s — or like to think they did. “It used to be called shacking up, and it was not approved of,” said Kelly Raley, a sociologist at the University of Texas, Austin.
Families and religious groups often condemned living together outside marriage. But people are far more accepting now, she said, and those turning 60 “are very different from the people who were 60 twenty years ago.”