Religious men and women who married in their twenties without cohabiting first have the lowest odds of divorce in America today, according to a recently published study.

Sociology professor and National Marriage Project director W. Bradford Wilcox says his latest empirical study along with demographer Lyman Stone supports the traditional model of marriage.

Americans who cohabit before marriage are less likely to be happily married and more likely to break up.  Couples who cohabited were 15pc more likely to get divorced than those who did not, according to our research. A Stanford study cited other research finding that the link between cohabitation and divorce was especially strong for women who cohabited with someone besides their future husband, he said.

“The conventional wisdom holds that spending your twenties focusing on education, work and fun, and then marrying around 30 is the best path to maximize your odds of forging a strong and stable family life. But the research tells a different story, at least for religious couples. Saving cohabitation for marriage, and endowing your relationship with sacred significance, seems to maximize your odds of being stably and happily married,” he says.