Today a majority of marriages are first preceded by cohabitation. Cohabiting relationships can be less stable than marriage, which can make it a bad setting for raising children. So why do couples choose to cohabitate? The best answers I can come up with is for financial reasons. It lessen the stress on a family when there are two incomes coming in, instead of one. Another reason is for convenience. Even though from the outside looking in it may not see like an ideal way to live, a lot of couples use cohabitating as a step before getting married. In the United States, there are states that are moving toward granting cohabiting couples some of the rights and responsibilities that married couples have. Cohabitation is here to stay and with cohabitation at least the couple can see how they work together and possibly end their relationship with less heartache and fewer complications then those couples who do get married (Cherlin