Abstract
The text we have is an article written a few years ago by Monika Mynarska and Laura Bernardi. This article is about cohabiting behaviors in Poland, especially its diffusion among the young generation, in terms of attitudes (what people think about it) and behaviors (what they do). Frist, the authors speak about the general trend in Europe which is an increase in the number of people entering cohabitations at early ages and among them, an increase in the number of people remaining unmarried. Then, they focus on the Polish situation which is characterizes by one of the lowest levels of cohabitation within Europe.
In general, in this country, people who want to live together also want to marry. After introducing the topic, the authors highlight a few important features of this country which remains an exception in terms of cohabitation. The Poles who cohabitate are often people who have often suffered from a relatively ‘negative societal image'. For instance, they can be considered as minorities because of poor economic and social living conditions or lower levels of qualification. It can also be the case for people who went through difficult times (divorce, death of the partner…). Cohabitation is not really spread among young people and more among adults who have already children. Paradoxically, even if they do not cohabitate so much, young people are more liberal towards cohabitation and they more often approve this way of living than old people.
What the authors want to understand in this article is the reason for such gap between the attitudes and the behaviors of young people in Poland. In their opinion, it has to do with the meaning of cohabitation and marriage in the polish society. In fact, cohabitation is often seen as the best alternative to marriage (because of values, economic conditions, previous experiences), but it has little approval in general.
