As in most other western developed countries, marriage breakdown has increased in
Australia, particularly since the end of World War 2. While the increase in the rate
of divorce in Australia has slowed since the 1980s and may have even stabilized and
started to decline, the nature and characteristics of divorcing couples continue to
change. It is very likely that these changes in divorce trends are underpinned at least
in part by the rise of unmarried, or de facto , cohabitation (henceforth cohabitation)
as an alternative or ‘stepping stone’ to marriage. Cohabiting relationships are less
stable than marital relationships, but we know little about the stability of cohabiting
relationships from official statistics. Thus, official statistics underestimate the true
extent of relationship dissolution in the Australian population. In this chapter we
document historical trends, explore changes in the nature and characteristics of
divorce in Australia and examine differences in the dissolution of cohabiting and
marital relationships using survey data.