Marriage as Ideal, Cohabitation as Practical: Revisiting Meanings of Marriage in the Philippines

Patterns of marital unions have changed in the Philippines in recent years. Formal marriage has declined while informal marriages or cohabitation has increased. Percentages of live births registered as nonmarital has likewise increased.

In this paper, we revisit and examine the meaning of marriage and cohabitation in today’s society with the goal of documenting and teasing out the different dimensions of those meanings. We use data from 12 FGDs of men and women from three metro areas in the Philippines conducted in 2007.

Results show that normative meanings attached to marriage remain but some of its dimensions have become salient. Marriage remains a natural course in people’s life but the attribution of an old unmarried person appears to be more allied with females than males. Marriage has become less of a marker of adulthood in the context of other more pressing considerations like financial security and stability, establishment of careers, or settlement of parental obligations. In the face of unforeseen events, like the occurrence of pregnancy outside of marriage, marriage remains an ideal while more practical considerations gain prominence. For some young people, they are willing to wait when the ‘time is right” while for others cohabitation becomes a rational choice.