Are Divorce Rates Really Higher Than Ever?
October 27, 2009 by Michelle Smith
Filed under Relationships
I found a report on marriage and divorce that led me to look at both in a different way. People say things like, “divorce is on the rise” or “divorce rates are higher than ever,” but where do they get this information?
I grew up with divorced parents who remarried and then divorced, then divorced again. My earliest memories are full of divorce, not marriage. I think that in some way that led me to think that nothing lasts forever. My grandparents were married. My Aunts and Uncles were married, but I was focused on my own family. Mom and dad got married and divorce.
Divorce is not necessarily on the rise and divorce rates are not necessarily higher than they’ve ever been. The report that I read mentions that changes in the population are not noted when divorce rates are mentioned. An example would be the time during the Depression, when people could not afford divorce, so instead of taking care of things legally men would just leave, they would abandon their families. Marriages would, in the true definition of the word, end but they would legally still exist.
A time that might show a high rate of divorce would be at the end of World War II, when men returned from war to brides they didn’t really now.
Another interesting point…
Most divorce figures in the U.S. are estimates. Several states don’t count how many divorces they have – including California, which stopped counting its divorces years ago.
Contrary to popular belief, which focuses purely on the divorce rate, the fact is actually that the real growth in divorce seems to have finished – there’s been a slow decline and leveling off at the end of the Twentieth Century. Of course, divorces are still much higher than they were in decades past – but then, a wedding that doesn’t end in divorce will last decades longer than a wedding from the past, because we’re living so much longer.
You can read the rest of the report here. I know that divorce is not a happy subject, but it could be something that has been misrepresented or misunderstood and I find that very interesting.
Image credit: Sxc.hu
From data in the 80s . . .
Divorce rate on a per person basis hasn’t risen that much. In other words, there is a relatively high % of people who marry once and stay married. The divorce rate is calculated by total # of divorces divided by total # of marriages.
So if one person has 4 divorces that skews the numbers. on a flesh-and-blood basis, the divorce rate isn’t so daunting.
The actual rate of family abandonment does not appear to have changed except in certain lower income segments where it has increased. The current attribution to that phenom is the addition of government benefits. Same attribution for the lower overall marriage rate in that segment.
Turns out we’ve been incentivizing the “wrong**” behaviors at the lower end of the income scale.
** wrong if you prefer couples/family units to marry, mate and stay together.
Great post, thanks for putting it out!
Kate
Another thing that makes it hard to count accurately is that the report mentions that some states don’t report the number of divorces anymore. It mentioned California in particular. Growing up it seemed that everybody’s parents were divorced, but as an adult, I know many people who have stayed married.
Thanks for commenting, Kate.