Do more “hook ups” mean less marriage? Well, the December 2007 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family kind of points that way, but I wouldn’t base everything on one study. Still, according to the authors of an article titled “Of Sex and Romance: Late Adolescent Relationships and Young Adult Union Formation,” adolescents involved in romantic relationships at the end of high school are more likely to marry and to cohabit in early adulthood, while those involved in “nonromantic sexual relationships” tend to just shack up. But wait–aren’t we getting married later and later these days? And so I ask the sociologists out there: a study that ends in early adulthood isn’t going to tell us much about the longterm prospects for marriage, oui?

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