Divorce and Remarriage

4/29/22, 3:54 AM 12.4: Remarriage After Divorce

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2.4: Remarriage After Divorce Objective: Identify the implications of the trends in remarriage after divorce

Remarriage is when a previously married person enters a second or higher order marriage.

Although there has always been a strong tendency in the United States for the formerly married to remarry, there has been a shift in the pattern in recent decades. For most of American history, people remarried after the death of a spouse but not after a divorce. Even as late as the 1920s, more remarriages occurred after widowhood than after divorce. By 1974 divorce had replaced death as the most common endpoint of marriages. Now, close to 90 percent of those remarrying are divorced. This increase in remarriage by the divorced is the result of two fundamental demographic facts. The first is that people are living longer, reducing the time of widowhood. Second, this trend is also simply the consequence of the ever-greater proportion of divorced people in the population. Divorce, as we have seen, is common now and is considered a relatively acceptable alternative to an unhappy marriage.

4/29/22, 3:54 AM 12.4: Remarriage After Divorce

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Divorce and remarriage after divorce are now common experiences. The next subsection examines the phenomenon of remarriage, focusing especially on the demographic facts of remarriage after divorce and the unique problems experienced by the partners in remarriage and by their children.