The Developmental Trends of Cohabitation in Lithuanian Society

Ausra Maslauskaite, Institute for Social Research, Lithuania

The aim of this paper is to present the developmental pattern of the cohabitation as first union in the Lithuanian society in the second half of 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. The paper is based on the Lithuanian GGS dataset and analyses the rise and transitions of cohabitation as a first partnership. The main finding reveals that the rise of cohabitation as the first union began in the Soviet period as at the end of the 1980s significant part of the first unions were cohabitations. Considering the rise of cohabitation several developmental stages could be distinguished: marginal, latent acceleration, rapid acceleration and the stage of predominance. The trend in the transitions from cohabitation to marriage reveals that cohabitation in the younger birth cohorts’ last longer. Thus the empirical evidence generates theoretical questions on the mode and factors of family modernization and they are discussed in the paper.