Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog

Study pinpoints what makes once-happy couples divorce

"What Kinds of Happy Couples Eventually Get Divorced?" by Alice G. Walton inThe Atlantic, 4/16/12:

"In a new study, the researchers followed 136 married couples who all reported being very satisfied in the first four years of their marriages. They questioned each spouse periodically over a period of 10 years, asking them to rate statements about marriage satisfaction, level of commitment, personality traits, stress levels, problem solving abilities, and how supportive they were with their partners. Some skills and traits were rated by the researchers, as the couples discussed relationship difficulties in the lab. ...

Couples who went on to divorce were more likely to be poorer communicators, and tended to display more negative emotions and support mechanisms than people who stayed married.

For example, the couples who went on to divorce were more likely to use blame and invalidation in their communication efforts. They were more likely to discourage a spouse from expressing his or her feelings, and to display "inappropriate pessimism." Husbands who were more verbally aggressive early on were also more likely to be part of couples who went on to divorce later.

Though the study was small, it has some big implications. The communication and emotional issues seen at the outset of the marriages may contribute to the success of the marriage in the long run, and help predict it. Even more important is the idea that these significant interpersonal issues can exist despite the fact that partners simultaneously report being very satisfied with the marriage. This odd coexistence is one that married (and soon-to-be married) people and mental health experts should keep in mind.

 [Link to study: J Fam Psychol. 2012 Feb;26(1):1-10. Epub 2011 Oct 31.: "Why do even satisfied newlyweds eventually go on to divorce?" by Lavner JA, Bradbury TN]

Another new study explored the relationship between one's general level of life satisfaction and his or her satisfaction with marriage, and found that it's a two-way street. In fact, having more life satisfaction increased one's odds for a happy marriage, and improving one's marital satisfaction was linked to greater happiness in life. The take-home message of this study is that life satisfaction is not only a result of a happy marriage, but, in large degree, it can actually help predict it.

[citing J Fam Psychol. 2012 Feb;26(1):165-70. "Examining changes in relationship adjustment and life satisfaction in marriage." By Stanley SM, Ragan EP, Rhoades GK, Markman HJ.]

 

Couples' divorce decision-making studied by divorce lawyer/mediator turned family studies Ph.D.

Helping Couples in the Divorce Decision-Making “Wilderness”

April 16, 2012 by  Alan J. Hawkins

 

Study on social benefits of monogamy vs. polygamy

"The puzzle of monogamous marriage." By Joseph Henrich,  Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson. In Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, March 2012. From its theme issue on "The biology of cultural conflict", edited by Gregory S. Berns and Scott Atran.

National Review article summarizing the study.

 

 

 

 

White working class turns away from marriage, other cultural institutions - WSJ

This is the marriage-related part of Charles Murray's Wall St. Jnl. article, "The New American Divide" (1/21/12) -

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

To illustrate just how wide the gap has grown between the new upper class and the new lower class, let me start with the broader upper-middle and working classes from which they are drawn, using two fictional neighborhoods that I hereby label Belmont (after an archetypal upper-middle-class suburb near Boston) and Fishtown (after a neighborhood in Philadelphia that has been home to the white working class since the Revolution).

To be assigned to Belmont, the people in the statistical nationwide databases on which I am drawing must have at least a bachelor's degree and work as a manager, physician, attorney, engineer, architect, scientist, college professor or content producer in the media. To be assigned to Fishtown, they must have no academic degree higher than a high-school diploma. If they work, it must be in a blue-collar job, a low-skill service job such as cashier, or a low-skill white-collar job such as mail clerk or receptionist.

People who qualify for my Belmont constitute about 20% of the white population of the U.S., ages 30 to 49. People who qualify for my Fishtown constitute about 30% of the white population of the U.S., ages 30 to 49.

I specify white, meaning non-Latino white, as a way of clarifying how broad and deep the cultural divisions in the U.S. have become. Cultural inequality is not grounded in race or ethnicity. I specify ages 30 to 49—what I call prime-age adults—to make it clear that these trends are not explained by changes in the ages of marriage or retirement.

In Belmont and Fishtown, here's what happened to America's common culture between 1960 and 2010.

Marriage: In 1960, extremely high proportions of whites in both Belmont and Fishtown were married—94% in Belmont and 84% in Fishtown. In the 1970s, those percentages declined about equally in both places. Then came the great divergence. In Belmont, marriage stabilized during the mid-1980s, standing at 83% in 2010. In Fishtown, however, marriage continued to slide; as of 2010, a minority (just 48%) were married. The gap in marriage between Belmont and Fishtown grew to 35 percentage points, from just 10.

Single parenthood: Another aspect of marriage—the percentage of children born to unmarried women—showed just as great a divergence. Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families. This unwelcome reality persists even after controlling for the income and education of the parents.

In 1960, just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education—women, that is, with a Fishtown education—were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital. Among the college-educated women of Belmont, less than 6% of all births were out of wedlock as of 2008, up from 1% in 1970. ...

 

30% of Divorced Women Knew He Was Mr. Wrong All Along!

"The Shocking Truth for Thirty Percent of Divorced Women" by Jennifer Gauvain on Huffington Post

More discussion of the study, by the same author: "Why So Many Of Us Marry The Wrong Person"

 

 

Married moms least depressed, single moms most depressed

"Parenthood is Hard, But Married Parents Are the Least Likely to be Depressed" -- Gruntled Center, 12/12/11, citing Marquardt and Wilcox' State of Our Unions 2011.

"Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences" -now in 3rd edition, e-book

Why Marriage Matters, Third Edition: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences

By W. Bradford Wilcox. Now Available as an E-Book! 

via Bill Coffin at NARME

 

Generosity with time, small kindnesses correlate strongly with better marriages

The Generous Marriage

 New York Times Magazine 12/11/11

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Marriage at record low, & always has been for last 50 years

Here's a link directly to the Pew study which there have been so many newspaper stories about today. In one sense, it isn't news: marriage is at a record low, but it's been steadily declining for 50 years, mostly from increased age at first marriage, much more than from any abandonment of the idea of marriage. And therefore it has ALWAYS been at a record low, at any given time during its 50-year decline.

The study has many other interesting facts about particular demographic groups, including that the decline is mostly among less-educated people, and is worldwide including less-developed countries.

Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low: 

New Marriages Down 5% from 2009 to 2010

by D’Vera Cohn, Jeffrey Passel and Wendy Wang