Violence Against Cohabiting Women: Present Perspective and Future Prospective

The trend towards increasing rates of cohabitation in Western industrialized nations has continued into the beginning of the new millennium (Ambert, 2005). In Canada, where rates of cohabitation have more than doubled since the Census began to collect data on this phenomenon in 1981 (Statistics Canada, 2002a), the majority of young people aged 20 to 29 now choose a common-law relationship as their first union (Statistics Canada, 2002b).1