The changing face of intimate premarital relationships in Taiwan

Objective This paper examines changing intimate premarital relationships in Taiwan. Background Marriages have been on the decline. Whether these foregone marriages are associated with a rise in cohabitation or other alternatives have become central to a thorough understanding of family changes, yet relevant research on Taiwan is limited. Methods The Taiwan Fertility and Family Survey collected nationally representative samples of 23,495 men and women aged 20–49 in four waves from 1998 to 2016. These were used to investigate changing patterns of cohabitation, marriage plans among cohabiting couples, premarital sex, and bridal pregnancies in addition to how the patterns vary by sex, education, and cohort. Results More adults in Taiwan have experienced intimate premarital relationships since 1998, with a shift from no educational gradient to a negative one for cohabitation and premarital conception. These patterns were gendered during 2012–2016. With a persistently short duration and fewer adults living together with the idea of eventually getting married, cohabitation has become less of a prelude to marriage than an alternative to singlehood, and very few of these have involved children. These shifting behaviors have been driven mainly by the cohort replacement effect and intra‐cohort changes. Conclusion Cohabitation has yet to become a long‐term stable union involving children. A lower birth rate caused by later and fewer marriages has not been offset by nonmarital births in cohabitation, and bridal pregnancies did not seem to have resulted in more marriages. Taiwan's socio‐cultural context likely plays a crucial role in the quasi‐Second Demographic Transition family changes here.