Evaluating The Cohabitation Epidemic by Neil Clark Warren

Evaluating The Cohabitation Epidemic Neil Clark Warren in his essay “The Cohabitation Epidemic” starts by using tennis stars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf’s case to mention the “cohabitation” issue and then quoting the data from the U.S Census Bureau and researcher Larry Bumpass to show that the number of people involved in cohabitation has significantly increased in the U.S in the last few decades. After that, Warren concludes that we should be alarmed over the recent increase of cohabiting couples. Before arguing against cohabitation, Warren introduces what kinds of people are cohabiting and why they are cohabiting. Followed by that, the author first uses the opinions from the bible to argue against cohabitation and then applies four strategies by comparing cohabitation and marriage to support marriage over cohabitation to lend the claim that a “ trial marriage” is unnecessary. Last, Warren uses the result from several studies to supplementally support the idea that there is no need for a “ trial marriage” because cohabiting couples have already known whether they should marry or not before making their final decisions and then restating his conclusion that the recent increase of cohabiting couples should cycle downward ( with our alarm over this issue ). After reading Warren’s essay, I think his essay should be unbelievable not only because there are a lot of fallacies involved but also because what Warren wrote about the comparisons between cohabitation and marriage tend to be weak to argue against cohabitation. One type of fallacy Warren used in his essay is false dilemma. This fallacy says “ there are only two alternatives to consider when there are actually more than two” (Lewis 187). For example, the author asserts “ people who cohabit fall into two categories” and then explains that either such people want to benefit from living together or treat cohabitation as a form of trial