Abstract

Cohabitation has been an increasing feature amongst students at the University of Buea. The study aims at investigating the link between cohabiting relationships and academic performance. It also determines the major types of cohabitation which exist amongst students. It also explains the reasons why students cohabit, the effects it has on their academic performance.

Amongst other limitations on the research on cohabitation, further studies are needed to determine whether cohabitation is a step toward formalization of unions and identify the action of the mechanism of factors that may explain the phenomenon.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of Study

An Abdullahi .M (2013) states that cohabitation can be encapsulated as both a status and a process and it is also an alternative type of housing for at least one of the cohabiters. He further stated that cohabitation is not a new phenomenon. However, the prevalence and popular acceptance of the phenomenon has shifted contemporary opinion about it from deviant or alternative lifestyle choices to one that is a normative experience for young men and women.

Cohabitation is a relational concept. It refers to the interaction between two people based on their own decision enhanced by various factors, including their transition to adulthood and seeking for alternative accommodation due lack of adequate accommodations in their respective higher-learning institutions. On the one hand, Svodziwa and Kurete (2014) state: Transition to adulthood is a period of relatively abundant opportunities and individuals are likely to form their attitudes and intentions about one particular activity in explicit comparisons to the alternatives to that activity.

Also, decisions made during the transition to adulthood have a particularly long-lasting influence on the remainder of the life course because they set individuals on paths that are sometimes difficult to change.

On the other hand, Svodziwa and Kurete( 2014) also state The constraint on policy framework where females cannot enter males hostels or males enter females hostels, undesirable quality of food at the institution’s dining hall, inadequate meals, no entertainment, finance, souring relationships among roommates at the institution and the desire for sexual gratification has caused students to resort to alternative areas for accommodation.

The above quotations indicate that cohabitation, as a decision-based relationship and a resort to alternative accommodation, is a romantic relationship in nature whereby relating students decide to live together and share what they have. However, this relationship can have positive or negative effects on students depending on the situation.

Cohabitation is when two people who are romantically involved choose to live together without making the formal commitment of marriage. It could also be referred to as a situation in which two people live together in a family framework analogous to marriage without actually having gone through a ceremony of marriage (Schuellnus, 2000).

As Cherlin (2001) observes, cohabitation first came to scholarly attention because of the living arrangements among college students of the 1960s but then, Cherlin maintains that these persons (college students) were the imitators, not the innovators. In other words, cohabitation was first practiced by the older adults before the young adults too started the act.

In recent decades, living together before marriage has become increasingly common in the United States (U.S). At least 50-70% of couples married during the 1990s cohabited premarital (Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Stanley, Whitton, & Markman, 2004). However, the prevalence duration and marital outcomes of Cohabitating unions vary substantially across countries like France ranges from 80%  and less than 75% in several countries like Australia, Belgium, and Finland ( Headline and Timber Lake, 2004).

In Nigeria, cohabitation is now a culture in most of the Nigerian tertiary institutions, particularly, the state-owned universities where on-campus accommodation is almost non-existent. Pre-marital sex (a prelude to cohabitation), has become a norm amongst many youths while abstinence is no longer regarded as a virtue.

Those who abstain or are chaste are regarded as unsophisticated. To avoid the stigma or name-calling, many youths who are apparently vulnerable are trying sex at earlier ages than ever before. According to Isiugo-Abanihe and Oyediran (2004) revealed that Nigerian youths reach sexual debut at age 16. In other words, they become sexually active at an earlier age and most of them, especially the female youths are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea, syphilis, and the much-dreaded HIV/AIDS.

This is aside the fact that the females drop out of school because of unplanned motherhood while unplanned fatherhood does not usually terminate males‟ schooling relationships” tend to be younger than people in marital relationships.

This supports the argument that cohabitation is often an antecedent to marriage. The majority of cohabitating relationships dissolve because the couples involved get African wedding is the culmination of a more or less lengthy process, including customary, religious, and civil rights (Meekers 1992).

According to studies on marriage, civil wedding ceremonies appeared in Africa with colonization. Before the arrival of White men in Africa, the wedding ceremony was traditional or religious. When there is neither civil nor religious or customary wedding ceremony, the union is called consensual union (visiting union).

This kind of union is very common in Latin America, representing nearly 50% of couples in some Central American and Caribbean countries (Locoh, 2005). They include more than (50%) of marriages in Botswana (57%) and Liberia (56.7%), and only 24.6% in Togo (Thiriat, 1999). More than a third of all marriages in Rwanda are consensual (Haguruka, 2003).

In Cameroon, the magnitude of this phenomenon is increasing. Women involved in consensus union, who accounted for only 15% of women aged 15-34 in 1991, represented up to 31.45% in 1998 (DHS II), and 38.94% in 2004 (DHS III). Consensual union is mainly due to the practice of dowry in the context of significantly increasing youth unemployment.

More so, because of the economic crisis in Cameroon since the 1980s, young people face more and more problems to prepare for formal union. Over the years, with the social changes occurring in Cameroon, traditional wedding ceremony is becoming a business issue, with the payment of dowry as the climax.

In Africa in general and in Cameroon in particular, it is difficult to wed without going through the dowry. Among the Beti for instance, marriage is primarily based on the payment of dowry (Nsuba): no dowry, no marriage. The absence of “Nsuba” leads to informal marriage (Alexandre and Binet 1958, p.53, quoted by Kamdem, 2006).

A study on the topic, conducted in June 2005 by the Centre for Research in Education and Social Sciences (CERDHESS) in five regions of Cameroon (North, Far-North, West, South, and Adamawa), showed that the amount of the dowry is based on the level and place of the girl’s education, as well as her working situation at the moment of the ceremony (Etoa 2006); dowry is also referred to as an obstacle to the formalization of marriage. In response to this extension, new concepts (“Come we stay”, “Help me to live”), appear to refer to informal or consensual marriage, or cohabitation in Cameroon, where women who represent 50.6% of the population (RGPH 2005), lag behind in almost all activities.

The index of gender parity in primary school enrollment is estimated at 90 girls per 100 boys in 2004 (CDHS III). In 2007, according to Cameroon Household Survey, 95.9% female workforce is in informal sectors. Concerning public and political life, the proportion of women in public institutions is less than 30%.

At judicial and legislative levels, nothing was developed for the protection of concubines. Involvement in cohabitation is rather likely to harm its members. Besides, Cameroon is a country with many ethnic groups, some of them with relatively permissive traditional socio-cultural habits, such as the Bantu; and others with rigid manners, such as the Sudanese and semi-Bantu. In the latter referred group, in which sex before marriage is repressed, early marriage is traditionally generalized, while in the other one, the informal union is rather common.

Since 2006, in order to help female and male concubines to leave their unlawful situation of cohabitation and implement their desire for marriage, Cameroon officials have established, through the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Family (MINPROFF), collective wedding ceremonies, mainly aiming at securing women and children, since that Cameroon legislation does not recognize any right to women cohabitating, nor to the children who are not recognized.

The practice of collective wedding ceremonies has surely increased harmony among the spouses, since henceforth, the woman can fully focus on the common life of the family. This study seeks to examine the effects of cohabitation on the academic performance of university students in Buea municipality.

1.2. Problem Statement

Unmarried Cohabitation has become increasingly prevalent. Over the past few decades, marriage has declined while cohabitation has rapidly increased ( Kieran 2004). The increasing rate of cohabitation is widely understood that couples have been delaying Living together ( Galston, 2008).

Students are in Cohabitating relationships because of their family background in terms of poverty, they are unable to pay for rental fees, either because they are promised marriage, and also because the guys in question told them they need to stay together in order to know each other.

These decisions of theirs intend to affect their studies in that many of them either drop out or suspend their studies immediately they become pregnant, also many of them face violence which affects them psychologically, they lose concentration in class, they perform poorly during exams. Cohabitation is considered as a form of bondage therefore this study seeks to examine the effects of cohabitation on the academic performance of university students in Buea.

1.3. Research Questions

1.3.1. Main Research Questions

What are the effects of cohabitation on the academic performance of university students in the Buea sub division?

1.3.2. Specific Research Questions

1. What are the different types of Cohabitation?
2. What are the profiles of UB students who cohabit?
3. What are factors responsible for premarital cohabitation among undergraduates in the university?
4. What are the effects of premarital cohabitation on academic performance?