Divorce and Remarriage
4/29/22, 3:37 AM 12.1: Divorce Rates
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12.1.1: Trends in Divorce Many politicians, clergy, editorial writers, and others have shown great concern over the current high rates of marital dissolution in the United States. Although estimates vary, most scholars agree that between 40 and 50 percent of all first marriages end in divorce (Visher et al., 2003). Various
government documents from the Census Bureau (“Marital Status and Living Arrangements”), The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Center for Health Statistics, reveal the following patterns for first marriages (summarized in Coontz, 2007):
One in five marriages end in divorce or separation within 5 years.
Couples who separate do so, on average, after 7 years and divorce after 8 years.
One in three marriages dissolve within 10 years.
More than two-fifths (43 percent) of marriages end within 15 years.
Three-fourths of all divorced men remarry; 6 out of 10
women remarry.
The historical rate reveals three trends. First, the rate has been rising since 1860 (see Figure 12.1), when the refined divorce rate (the number of divorces in a given year per every 1,000 married women) was about 1 to a rate of 16.4 in 2009 (see
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12.1.2: Factors Correlated with Divorce
Cohort
Premarital Cohabitation
Age at First Marriage
two quite different populations. It compares the marriages in a given year with the
divorces in that year that came from all existing marriages, not just those from that year.
Further confounding this measure is that about 45 percent of marriages in a given year are remarriages for one or both spouses.
A realistic measure of divorce reverses the method for the divorce/marriage ratio just
mentioned. Instead of comparing the number of marriages in a given year with the
number of divorces in that year, this measure (the refined divorce rate) records the number of divorces that occur out of every 1,000 married women in a year. If we use
this measure, the divorce rate was 9.2 per thousand marriages in 1960, 22.6 in 1980,
and 16.4 in 2009.
Sources: Hacker, Andrew (ed.), U/S: A Statistical Portrait of the American People. New
York: Viking Press, 1983, pp. 106–108; Ritzer, George, Kenneth C. W. Kammeyer, and
Norman R. Yetman, Sociology: Experiencing a Changing Society, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1982, pp. 330–332; Shehan, L. Constance, Marriages and Families,
2nd ed. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2003, pp. 410–412; Saluter, Arlene F., “Marital
Status and Living Arrangements.” Current Population Reports, Series P-20-380 (May
1983): 3; National Center for Health Statistics, First Dissolution, Divorce, and
Remarriage: United States. Hyattsville, MD: Department of Health and Human Services (May 31, 2001); Eshleman, J. Ross and Richard A. Bulcroft, The Family, 11th ed.
Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2006, pp. 537–540; Hurley, Dan (2005). “Divorce Rate:
It’s Not as High as You Think.” New York Times (April 19).
Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divor.html.
Second, although the current divorce rate is near its historical peak, it has been declining slowly for the past 30 years. And third, as shown in Figure 12.1 the divorce rate is clearly affected by social and economic conditions.
Figure 12.1 Annual Divorce Rates, United States, 1860–2009 (divorces per thousand married women age 15 and over)
Sources: Cherlin, Andrew J. Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, p.
22; Levitan, Sar A., Richard S. Belous, and Frank Gallo, What’s Happening to the American Family? Rev. ed.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, p. 27; and current U.S. Census Bureau documents.
Note, for example, that the rate increased after wars: slightly after the Civil War, more noticeably after World War I, and then dramatically after World War II. Note also that there was a downward shift during the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession, which began in late 2007, and an increase in the prosperous 1970s.
12.1.2: Factors Correlated With Divorce
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The probability of divorce is associated with a number of variables, the most significant of which are cohort, premarital cohabitation, age at first marriage, circumstances of the first birth, the presence of children, income, race, religion, and the intergenerational transmission of divorce.
Cohort
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A cohort is a category of people who were born during the same time period and thus are subject to similar social factors as they move through the life cycle. For example, children born in the economic depression of the 1930s are
different as adults than children born after World War II. The Census Bureau found, for example, of the first marriages for women from 1955 to 1959 (very likely born during the Great Depression), about 79 percent were still married 15 years later. For women married between 1985 and 1989 (born soon after World War II and the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation), only 57 percent marked their 15th anniversary (reported in Coontz, 2007).
Premarital Cohabitation
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The findings are mixed on whether living together before marriage increases the likelihood of divorce. Past research, when cohabitation was not the norm, found a significantly higher divorce rate for cohabitors. But today, when about two-thirds of couples who marry cohabitate first, the pattern is changing. A 2010 report by the National Center for Health Statistics (reported in Jayson, 2010), found that when couples who were engaged moved in together, their chances of divorce were the same as divorcing couples who never cohabitated
before marriage. The key, then, is the commitment cohabiting partners share (for a review of the research, see Amato, 2010; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported in Stobbe, 2012).
Age at First Marriage
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The age at which persons marry plays a major role in whether marriages will remain intact, with marriages between younger people having a heightened probability of divorce. There are several reasons for this relationship between
youth and marital instability. An obvious one is that teenagers may lack the maturity to handle the responsibilities of marriage. Their youth and relative inexperience in relationships also may lead them to make less sensible choices in marital partners. Those who marry early may not have had sufficient dating experience to develop a clear idea of what characteristics they value in a partner. Couples who marry young usually have restricted opportunities for a college education and tend to have financial difficulties, especially if they have children early. Since premarital pregnancy is a common reason for early marriages, many young people enter marriage for the wrong reasons, have reduced chances for education and income, and are likely to feel prematurely
limited in their search for potential spouses. Women especially find that early marriages and parenthood restrict their options, and this feeling increases the potential for resentment and strains, leading to eventual marital dissolution.
12.1: Divorce Rates