48% of all 1st marriages of women under the age of 18 have ended by their 10-year anniversary.
24% of all 1st marriages of women 25 years or older have ended by their 10-year anniversary.
Ethnicity
By the 10th anniversary:
20% of Asian American marriages have ended in divorce
32% of European American marriages have ended in divorce
34% of Latina marriages have ended in divorce
47% of African American marriages have ended in divorce.
Education
36% of non-college educated individuals are divorced, compared to 24% of college graduates.
Divorce History
Children of divorce are at a higher risk for divorcing themselves than if they come from intact homes (4x according to some research).
2nd marriages have a 60% divorce rate and fail somewhat more rapidly than 1st marriages.
3rd marriages typically fail by the 5th year (73%).
Divorce Statistics
43% of all first marriages end in divorce (perhaps as many as 67% of 1st marriages end in divorce over a 40yr span).
50% of divorces occur during the first 8 years of marriage, peaking at 3 years of marriage.
Only 12% of divorces are in marriages that have survived 20 years.
Almost 1/3 of children under age 18 live with one parent.
Only 56.3% of custodial parents received a child support agreement/award for child.
Factors Contributing to Divorce (cont.)
American husbands are less happy than they used to be because they’re doing more housework than they used to.
Divorce is less shameful and easier to obtain.
A no-fault divorce is seen as a more desirable response to a bad marriage.
Cohabitation is more prevalent; casual cohabitation leads to less respect for marriage and increases people’s willingness to divorce.
Stages of Divorce
Pre-separation
Fantasies, thoughts about life without spouse, emotional estrangement begins.
May maintain outward appearances of happy marriage at this point.
Early Separation
Decision is made to separate; begin to make decisions regarding residential and financial arrangements.
Mid-separation
Increasing feelings of stress and being overwhelmed.
Realities of two households, single parenting, and financial limitations set in.
May experience pseudo-reconciliation: reunite due to stress and fears, not because issues have been properly addressed, particularly when couple has been together for 10 years or more.
Late Separation
Learning to survive as a single person again, dealing with children’s reality that family is not going to reunite, dealing with social changes.
Growth oriented coping: some separated individuals may experience positive personal growth, such as furthering their education, becoming more autonomous, and experiencing greater levels of confidence and personal efficacy.
Reconciliation
14% of A.A. women are successfully reconciled.
9% of E.A. women are successfully reconciled.
Dependent on age at separation and presence of children.
Women who were 23 or older at separation are more likely to reconcile.
Children in the home increase efforts to reconcile.
Emotional Divorce
Prior to legal action, spouses are disillusioned, unhappy, rejected.
Beginning phase: disappointed but hopeful
Middle phase: hurt/angry when situation does not improve
End phase: emotional detachment and apathy
"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference"
Reasons for Divorce
Pre-existing doom: couple is so poorly matched that breakup is inevitable.
Mechanical failure/process loss: poor social skills, communication failure, inability to experience intimacy, and problems adjusting to changes in relationships.
Sudden Death: Betrayal of cardinal rules of relationships, such as infidelity, abuse, etc.
Infidelity
A breach of trust and a betrayal of a relationship.
Sexual
Romantic
Online infidelity
Combined
Annually approx. 4% of married people have sex outside of their marriage.
Over a lifetime, about 17% have had extramarital sex.
In committed relationships, married and unmarried, 16% of the partners have cheated.
Currently:
Affairs: 20−25% of married women and 25−40% of married men reported having had an affair at least once during their marriage.
Women cheat almost as often as men.
Mate Poaching: 60% of men and 53% of women acknowledge trying to woo someone in a committed relationship.
Genetic Predisposition
Wallum et.al (2008) A specific type of genetic allele that codes for Vasopressin correlated with lower scores on the Partner Bonding Scale.
Also correlated with significant marital crisis and lowered marital satisfaction.
Males with 2 copies of this gene were 2xs as likely to have had marital crisis than those with 1 or 0 copies of this allele.
Motivations for Affairs
Opportunity, novelty, isolation, revenge.
Women are more likely to seek emotional as well as sexual connections outside of marriage.
Men are more likely to seek sexual connections outside of marriage, even when the marriage is emotionally healthy (Glass & Wright, 1985).
Outcomes of Affairs
Most affairs last approx. 1 year.
Fewer than 10% result in marriage.
Marriages that begin as part of an adulterous affair have a 70% divorce rate.
Attribution of Blame
Fundamental attribution error: people believe that spouses cheat due to dispositional rather than situational factors, leading to an increased lack of trust and divorce.
Legal Divorce
Formal legal action taken to dissolve marriage.
Formalized agreements are made regarding child custody, alimony, child support, residence, and property.
All states have no-fault divorce laws.
Neither party needs to establish guilt/wrongdoing.
Continued Conflicts Post-Divorce
Separation of finances may not occur for years, despite the legal divorce being completed.
Past debts, property taxes, and additional childcare expenses can all be areas of further conflict.
Legal aid may be required when alimony and child care payments are not made, when changes to the formal agreement are desired by either divorced spouse.
Separation of friends, social contacts, and extended family occurs.
Most divorced couples experience a significant shift in their social supports.
Children may lose contact with extended family members; special events and holidays become (even more) complicated and stressful.
Partners undergo emotional separation from one another; may take years or not occur at all.
Lingering anger, pain, resentment can continue to fester.
The ex-spouse will FOREVER be your child’s parent.
Decisions about co-parenting, limit setting, and child support will have to be made.
Children are frequently placed in the middle of contentious divorces and may be emotionally damaged by the continued conflict.
Talking to Children About Divorce
A flawed script – no false hopes. Don’t avoid the talk.
Studies show: when conflict is low in the two- parent family, children have more problems following a separation than they did when there parents were together.
Keep it simple!
How you talk with your children is at least as important as what you say.
In the long run - what you say will be less important than what you do.
For infants and toddlers: they do not have the cognitive ability to understand what a separation means; they need to experience the changes in order to begin to understand them.
For Preschoolers: they need concrete explanations about the reasons for separation and the consequences for their lives.
For Early School-Age Children: they have the cognitive capacity to absorb more detailed explanations than preschoolers.
Late School-Age Children: same as early except they want to know who is to blame.
Adolescents: clear explanations about the reasons for the separation and who is responsible for the decision to separate. Maintain boundary; let them have a voice.
Co-Parenting Styles
Perfect Pals: share decision making/child rearing duties, may remain friends
Cooperative Colleagues: Able to cooperate re: children
Angry Associates: bitter and resentful, may continue to fight re: custody and $ for years
Fiery Foes: Bitter conflict, unable to co-parent
Dissolved Duos: break entirely with family
Custody
Court-mandated ruling regarding which divorced parent will have the primary responsibility for the children’s upbringing.
Types
Sole custody
Split custody
Joint custody
Child Support
Paid to the spouse who gets custody of children.
Mostly women.
Most women who receive it have visitation arrangements with the father.
Economic Impact on Custodial Parents
85% of custodial parents are women.
28.9% of them live below the poverty line.
50% of all men neither see nor support their children after divorce.
Most often occurs when there is high conflict with the mother and father avoids interactions with children to minimize consequent interactions with mother.
2/3 of noncustodial fathers spend more $ on a monthly basis on their car payments than they do on their children.
Impact on Children
Difficulties faced by children from divorced families
Lower academic achievement
Behavioral problems
Lower self-concept
Long-term health problems
Effects of divorce can be short or long term
Helping Children Cope
Reassuring the children
Encouraging open communication
Emphasizing that children are not responsible for the problems
Maintaining an ongoing relationship with the children
Children's Bill of Rights
Every child whose parents divorce has:
The right to love and be loved by both of your parents without feeling guilt or disapproval.
The right to be protected from your parents' anger with each other.
The right to be kept out of the middle of your parents' conflict, including the right not to pick sides, carry messages, or hear complaints about the other parent.
The right not to have to choose one of your parents over the other.
The right not to have to be responsible for the burden of either of your parents' emotional problems.
The right to know well in advance about important changes that will affect your life; for example, when one of your parents is going to move or get remarried.
The right to reasonable financial support during your childhood and through your college years.
The right to have feelings, to express your feelings, and to have both parents listen to how you feel.
The right to have a life that is a close as possible to what it would have been if your parents stayed together.