When it comes to divorce rates in the US conventional wisdom is that it peaked around 1980 and has been declining ever since. However, there is new data which suggests that the rate of divorce in the US has remained nearly the same since 1990.
The biggest problem with measuring divorce rates in the US over the last two decades is obtaining a complete data set. Official data isn’t available for all years for all states. Here is a portion of Table 133 from the 2012 Statistical Abstract of the United States. You can get the original in PDF or spreadsheet form here.
As you can see, the number of divorces hasn’t been available from the state of California for over twenty years*. California isn’t the only state with missing data; recent data is also missing for Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota. Click here to see the full table with the missing data highlighted.
There is another problem with the table from the Statistical Abstract; it is only showing the raw number of divorces as well as the number per 1,000 population. The problem with the first number is obvious; the US population is increasing, so you can’t make a meaningful comparison over time using the raw number of divorces. The problem with the other way they report divorce rates is more subtle. While showing it as a value per 1,000 population adjusts for population growth, it doesn’t take into account another important trend. Only people who are married are at risk for divorce, but the percentage of the population which is married at any given time has declined steadily:
To adjust for this groups like the National Marriage Project divide the raw number of divorces by the number of people who are married in the same period and convert this into divorces per 1,000 married couples (or married women):
This metric makes the most sense when looking at the long term trend, but the data source is problematic. The chart above suffers from the same missing data as the table from the 2012 Statistical Abstract. Out of six 5 year periods of decline since 1980, only the first two include data from California, the largest state in the country by population. Starting with 1995 data from California isn’t included, and as I pointed out above five other states are missing for one or more recent periods as well. Louisiana and Indiana don’t report data going back to at least 1990, perhaps further. This is a very significant gap, and until recently the choices were to use the partial data or not measure national divorce rates at all.
But now there is another option. The American Community Survey (ACS) performed by the US Census has recently added questions about divorce. The ACS uses a nationally representative sample, which solves the problem of the states which aren’t reporting divorces. As I shared here, the National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University used ACS data to calculate divorce rates by age in the US for 2010. In their report they make a surprising statement:
The overall U.S. divorce rate has remained essentially unchanged over the past 20 years. In 1990, 19 people divorced for every 1,000 marrieds versus 18 per 1,000 in 2010.
I’m not sure why the NCFMR is calculating the 1990 rate as 19 while the National Marriage Project calculates this as 20.9. While the two are calculating slightly different metrics, I’m not sure this would account for a nearly two point difference. NCFMR is reporting the number of divorces per 1,000 married couples, while the Marriage Project figure is per 1,000 married women.
At any rate, NCFMR is reporting a drop of only 1 divorce annually per 1,000 married couples between 1990 and 2010. This is very different than conventional wisdom, and it will be interesting to see how the researchers in this field sort this out. The NCFMR document which makes this statement is dated 2012 and since it references a working paper from March of 2012 it appears to be very recent. Interestingly, a slightly older document from the same group makes a very different statement about recent divorce rates. Here is what they wrote in First Divorce Rate, 2010, published in 2011 (emphasis mine):
Over the last four decades, there has been more than a three-fold percentage increase in the proportion of Americans who are currently divorced, rising from 2.9% in 1970 to 10.7% in 2008 (FP-10-01). Despite this growing proportion, research suggests that among married couples, the divorce rate—which peaked in the late 70s at about 23 divorced per 1,000—has declined over the past 25 years (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2007).
The full title of the Stevenson and Wolfers paper they cite is Marriage and divorce: Changes and their driving forces, and you can view the paper here (see Figure 1 on P3). As with the data from the Marriage Project, Stevenson and Wolfers show a steady decline in divorces per 1,000 married, although they show what looks like some yearly variation. They don’t give specific numbers in the chart, but their value for 2005 (the final year they show) appears to be the same as the Marriage Project is reporting for the same year (16.4).
I was curious about the different data sets being used by the National Marriage Project and the recent NCFMR report, so I emailed the National Marriage Project. Brad Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project was kind enough to reply quickly to my question. Here is his reply:
Thanks for your note. Because the ACS data provides a more geographically comprehensive portrait of current divorce trends than does the data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Marriage Project is considering switching to ACS data in the 2012 edition of the State of Our Unions.
Given how recent the ACS data is I think this is a very fair response. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do in their upcoming report. Their last two reports have been released in December, so I assume that is when the 2012 version will come out as well.
*Table 133 from the 2012 Statistical Abstract doesn’t show divorce numbers between 1990 and 2000, but the final table from the 1995 Statistical Abstract shows California data missing for 1993.
Update: The National Marriage Project is using the ACS data in their latest report.
Hi Dalrock,
I’m clearly missing something. If the rate of divorce is 20 per 1000 (to round numbers) why does it seem divorce is so epidemic? I’m not quite sure how to interpret the data so I am likely just missing something. How does this match up with the 50% marriage failure rate that is often bandied about (Which IIRC is rather dubiously calculated).
I’m sure part of it is just a factor of 2 in 100 spread over 350 million people is still a lot of people, but it doesn’t seem that it would be just that simple.
Sorry if I am just being thick but i’m confused. I might be a software engineer by trade but statistics was a course I did poorly in at university. Pure maths is much simpler.
[D: I should have been more clear. It is 20 divorces per 1,000 couples per year. Over ten years this would mean around 20% of marriages would end in divorce.]
@Dalrock. There are a couple of reasons why California doesnt have divorce numbers per my double PHD lawyer who is one smart lady.
– No fault divorce was initiated without ANY statistical data, study, or pilot.
– California was the launching platform of no-fault divorce.
– Fait accompli
Any credibile agency could have a field day with compiling the evidence and using it as fuel to reverse no-fault.
However, the lawyers and courts are making too much $$$ off it while destroying the family
I’ve never bought the idea that the divorce rate was declining. I am not certain there is conspiratorial effort to keep statistics from being available so much as just bland acceptance of status quo hence no perceived need for them. The courts and legal apparatus clearly have no interest in stepping it back.
In fact I would suggest that there are metrics that show an increasing divorce rate, I’d need to think it through to determine what the metric would be, but with less marriages and the population increasing, a metric that accounts for those for apples to apples comparison would yield, i assert, ever increasing divorce. Its one of those “or my lyin eyes” things.
I guess the follow-up question to this is what conclusion do we draw regarding marriage when we combine divorce rates per 1,000 marriages with marriage rates per 1,000 persons (2,000?).
The missing data on divorce could indicate one of two things. Either it is an issue of privacy or it is an indicator that divorce, like marriage, is no longer considered an important factor in the well-being of the state.
@Miserman – It is not a privacy issue. Divorce records are public – anyone can go in and review them at anytime – anyone and anytime.
As Empathologicalism suggested – The numbers are greater than what is presented.
Michael Singer, it is not as simple as all that. If no state level agency collects data on divorce, then to determine a state’s raw divorce numbers would require inspecting county level data, for every county. That would be quite tedious in California, for example. It is quite difficult to believe that there is no state level data collection on divorce, though, given the way child support has been handled; the database on divorced men with children appears to be quite large, and well maintained.
Given the nearly obsessive amount of record keeping that modern governments engage in it seems very, very odd that accurate numbers on marriages & divorces cannot be obtained from all states.
If the percentage of women ever married is higher than males ever married and the percentage of women currently married is lower than males currently married, is it a given that the pool of women marrying is significantly larger than the pool of men marrying?
Would this indicate a large pool of women muliple marrying the same men while a significant pool of divorced men drop out? Could this be the marriage ‘strike’ simply that a higher proportion of divorced men are not remarrying compared to women, who then share a smaller pool of male divorcees willing to marry?
This just in :
Living alone after divorce can feel like liberation. But trust me, it turns into aching loneliness
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2168926/Living-divorce-feel-like-liberation-But-trust-turns-aching-loneliness.html
Johnycomelately says:
July 4, 2012 at 6:07 pm
As discussed on this site before, though the indications of a marriage strike are not showing up in most studies at this point, there is a clear ‘remarriage’ strike occurring among men. Whether this indicates that men are less likely to remarry, or that women are less likely to marry divorced men due to alimony/child support etc. remains to be seen. It appears that the men who are remarrying are either men with large means to support multiple court ordered payments, or are stuck in the old-order dynamic of “marry that girl”. Both are overwhelmingly ‘beta’ men, as there is no correlation between partner count and socio-economic condition, like what exists for marriage correlation.
@Dalrock,
Thanks Dalrock that clears some of it. So the 50% divorce rate comes from rates of marriage over a lifetime then? Or seemingly higher actually. OR maybe not because as more people divorce presumably the divorce rate slows down. Anyway, thanks for the clarification. That would gel will my actual observations based on various age cohorts.
@Anonymous Reader -I guess it may be a bit to much for each county to forward their records and then compile a state report instead of inspecting each county (Fyi, I am being a bit sarcastic on this – Inspecting the validity of a forwarded public record is redundant and costly).
Btw, I do agree with you on “It is quite difficult to believe that there is no state level data collection on divorce” and that is my point exactly.
Given that 90% or 45 of the US states provide this data and 10 % or 5 dont leaves the screaming obvious question – They “dont provide” the data or they “cant provide” the data ?
I’ll leave that up to you to decide in which one it is given that 90% of the states in the US provide the data.
Michael Singer, I guess the question boils down to this: why is is possible for Alabama to provide this data but not possible for California to do the same? If the task is too demanding for Caifornians, perhaps they could hire some people away from the Alabama state government, or subcontract the task out to Alabama?
Remarriage gap, sad article definitely fits in with everything Dalrock has alluded to.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/fashion/13genb.html?pagewanted=all
Could the remarriage gap attribute to the higher level of males being currently married compared to females?
As stated earlier – Fait accompli. Any credibile agency could have a field day with compiling the evidence and using it as fuel to reverse no-fault. However, the lawyers and courts are making too much $$$ off it…
If I reading this correctly, the divorce rate in Cali in 1990 was 54 %….
@Michael Singer
I agree that it is absurd that California and the other states don’t bother to compile the statistics on this any more. I’m not sure what their motive is, but if it was to stop researchers from showing that no fault divorce was a disaster they seem to have waited too long. They reported data through 1990, which gave them ten years post peak rates.
@ Dalrock – if the divorce rate hit 54% in 1990 (incredulous) – why change ? Any idea how much money is being made in the legal system at the family court level ? To get a fair divorce requires escalating their case to the APPELLATE level.
I will use myself as example. Had to go to trial without a lawyer ( I was at 116% debt to income ratio), I had to pay for her lawyer and everything else when I could not afford my own ( the court forces one to borrow money for a lawyer).
What should have been a easy divorce (no kids) turned into a long expensive nightmare of over $100k in lawyer fees and wrecked the the financial community of which I have learned to be totally dependent of God. I am not the only one in this situation. If one actually wants a shot at a fair hearing and custody one has to spend big bucks and move the docket out of family law into appellate.
Btw, after all was said and done – my ex realized how stupid she was by killing the goose who laid the golden egg.
On killing geese and golden eggs.
As has been said here before, many times. Women do not comprehend cause and effect.
Michael Singer – my questions are all rhetorical.
We both know the answer
@Anonymous Reader. I think my answer may be different than yours.
There were quite a few states who were fence sitting on no-fault ( taking a conservative approach and looking at CA as the guinea pig).
Cali alone had a 54% rate of divorce in 1990 (chance are it was trending upward). Rather than show another increase and stifle other states – just do away with the data.
Another reasons for lower divorce rates are many families which have no kids and equal incomes. There are no perverse incentives, and, more importantly, the wife has nothing to take with her. Until there are kids, she is more dependant on her husband for company and emotional involvement. Once there are kids, the main goal of marriage has been achieved, she has the kids for companions, and her husband can never really disconnect from her.
Uncle Elmer says:
July 4, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Trust me Elmer, divorce is liberation.
This is telling…..making divorce have certain hoops one need jump through lest some punitive effect on the filer by doled out would make the process even MORE acrimonious, in theory driving the costs and associated drama UP. ANT limiting of divorce with legal partial barriers or road blocks would do the same.
So, I am not convinced it is simply that the present apparatus is profitable for the system. I am convinced that to address ease of divorce in any way now would necessarily have a deleterious impact on female filers, and would invoke feminist histrionics at its attempted inception. THAT is why the system cannot be changed, because any change would limit women in their ease of filing on a whim. Period. I understand well the profit motive and have read Baskerville’s book and all his work as he clearly documents same.
Think of it this way, any change would be better/worse for men and/or better/worse for women so I believe that a change that moved the fulcrum even further in direction -bad for men-would be vehemently opposed by men sufficiently to deter that….enough is indeed enough and the system and the women are quite pleased with it as is thank you very much. ANY tightening of divorce laws is seen as an affront to female freedom. Hence, no stats that would potentially get a few folks thinking about these things.
Heck when i was in the divorce process, we never had a hearing, we held 2 mediation sessions, and they sent some letters. We spent 40K and practically nothing happened. Had we not reconciled it would easily have been deep into 6 figs, especially because we co-owned a small chain of businesses and the forensic accounting alone was thousands. Thats when I learned to add forensic accountants to the list of folks supported by the divorce regime.
“my ex realized how stupid she was by killing the goose who laid the golden egg.”
Because she was blinded by spite,she cut off her own nose to spite her face.
Does she regret it?
I suppose that depends upon how much reward she perceived from your destruction.
Living well is the best revenge,and good policy.
God Bless,go forth and avoid ‘the law.”
If we, as a nation,could and would reduce our “laws” back to the Golden Rule and 10 commandments we would thrive mightily.
“Think of it this way, any change would be better/worse for men and/or better/worse for women so I believe that a change that moved the fulcrum even further in direction -bad for men-would be vehemently opposed by men sufficiently to deter that.”
Clear example are the TRADCONs who actively engage in “Marry the slut” rhetoric. Think they’d sit by and allow a shift towards men, if they see men as the source of society’s problems?
“I’ll hold him down while you beat him.”
On the question of why some states aren’t reporting on divorces, one other thing which comes to mind is all of the states are reporting on marriages. See the table from the Statistical Abstract. None of them fail to report the number of marriages for any period. This is despite the fact that:
1) There are more marriages to track than divorces.
2) Divorces are a much more state intensive event than marriages.
Peasant, I actually asserted however that we would not see overt further codified movement in the negative direction for men either. I assumed I would get blow back for saying that but I would then ask…..how? How can it get worse? And when you consider that…and what would have to be written into law, it would be things like “wife gets 100% of assets automatically, wife gets 100% custody automatically”. These, at least today, would be rejected despite the fact that in practice its massively in that direction by judicial fiat.
I can speak best to prediction from a Christian perspective, and it could well mirror secular reaction….any movement, ANY….even asking that the wait period be extended from a month to 3 months or benign things like that, is excoriated by churchian women and their Personal Jesus (TM) because he told them they were “released” and limiting the butterfly freedom is like slowly tearing of her wings.
empath,
Looking for direct attacks would be wasted effort.
Look in other directions. Let’s take the Obamacare bill. “Children” up to age 26 can stay on medical tabs of parents. How long will it take to make that manadatory as part of divorce settlement? I think it will be at the fringes that add up to more and not a direct action that is obvious to isolate.
After living with a gal for several years I decided to “marry” her.
I told her, we are in front of God and sincere and this is all the Bible requires for a legal marriage,and in the Hebrew and American Indian custom I put my blanket/coat upon her.
I doubt she took those vows seriously,as after 8 years of co-habitation she got “bored” and unhaaapy” and left,with great prejudice legally speaking.
So GLAD I did not let the State into my marriage.
There MUST be a way for a real orthodox church to marry folks w/o bring the State into the contract as a 3rd party.
It seems they refuse to NOT render unto Caesar
what is NOT his..
Perhaps it’s those IRS tax exempt c forms.
A good pastor h3eld his ground and ran off those anti-christic buzzards.
If you don’t know of whom I speak,check out Pastor Pete Peters.
@Freebird
The ex had 3 suicide attempts (2 documented), gained 70lbs, genital herpes, taking care of another guys kids who cheated on her.
I do agree “Living well is the best revenge,and good policy”. But loving well is even better.
Peasant, true , and agreed, I was speaking as you guessed about direct family law….other goodies that can be tossed in….that will get worse
@Michael Singer
I hear ya on loving well.
Long story,but for now I’m learning to love myself,and nurture that inner child.
It’s not narcissism as I don’t feed of other people,I am a loner.
As for the pain of breakup IE “better to have loved and lost than to never have loved..”
That’s all good and fine,but when the pain extends into courtroom sessions that could result in jail time/loss of freedom,that’s when the risk over reward ratio becomes too low for me.
Regarding Pastor Pete:
He refused to file the 103?c3 tax exempt forms the IRS required due to they could now tell what to say or not say regarding political candidates via ‘equal time’ laws.
His defense-Jesus Christ owns this church, I am just preaching here.
The members of the church barricaded themselves in the church for neigh a week whilst IRS agents attempted to seize it.
Eventually he won in court with the “Christ is King” defense.
A sweet bit of history for yall freedom lovers.
Furthermore, Pete proved Jesus Christ is a real person legally speaking in a court of law.
Whatever the detractors say about Pete,you have to admire his courage and conviction to stand against the system.
This was all back in the early 80’s if I recall correctly.
Of course the legalities took years,but he did prevail.It can be done,it just take courage and conviction.
(And never,never back down to the authoritah)
Correction:
501c3 IRS from for tax exempt churches.
YOUR church has signed one of these and the govt tells them what they can say and do.
lzozozozlzozozlzozoz
i thinkz dat a lot of popele buttfuck alansext and ahcak up and blow jobsz without a minister these days.
den when dey break and stop da butthetxing zlzozozzo and start butthexting someoneeoine new, der is no divorce!!
hence da divorce rate is delcingingz!!!! lzozozozzozozloz
u can call me sherlockck! sherlock holmess!! or john holmes zlzozllzo with da lostas cockas zlozlzoz
da main difference between a minister and a pimp is dat da regime da minister fronts will charagfe charge u for past use of a pusysysysusususysys pussy via alimonies and divroorce settlementz.
da pimp will never chrage you for 4 past use of a pussy zlzozozlzoozoz
“Women do not comprehend cause and effect.”
I can’t say how true this is overall, but it can be very true in divorce situations. I’ve seen how women can be buoyed on a wave of ’empowerment’ and liberation, goaded and cheer-leaded toward divorce by media and their girlfriends. They are so caught up in the rationalization of their own divorce, that they can easily avoid envisioning the possibility of working on their own marriage, let alone the stark realities of post-divorce life.
What it comes down to is that women are terrible long-term planners and thus terrible investors.
For women do not operate in the realm of abstract, exalted ideals, but rather they operate in the realm of gina tingles and butt tingles. The ancients realized this in their Great Books and Classics which exalt Zeus, Moses, Jesus, and Thor over a woman’s butt tingles.
A woman’s greatest asset is her youth. With it, she can gain her way into an exalted mythology of wife and grandmother. But too, too many women waste it on pursuing the imediate gratifiction for their butt tingles and gina tingleszlzozlzolzozlzozo.
Then, they hit 30, and their tinglez tingl gina tinglalzizyzzizlz and butt tinglelzlzlelele aren’t so great anymore. But by the time she hits 30, her greatets asset is gone.
Today’s Bernanke elders smile upon this, as the depopulation of the responsible class is achieved. Ben Berannke rubs his hands and smiles, creates a few more debt-based dollars which men must some day pay off, and funds more feminist studies with it.
I wrote a poem for all the poor, deosuled, asscoked women with cats. I will share it soon.
“da professional womenz ode”
alpha fucks and beta bucks
dat is how we roll
da butthexting cockass we fucks and sucks
and in our anuthes it doth deosul
alpha fucks and beta bucks
it is da way of da fed
to transfer assetss to dose who butthext
cuckold dose who pay for our bread
beta bucks and alpha fucks
it’s what day teach us we;’re entitled too
da assetts from betas we plucks
after da alphas desol us through our hole for poo
lzozozlzzolzlzlzlz
cuckold da betas cockhold da alphas
datsz what day taught us in mba grad school
as da feiisnsits see no truth nor justice in their laws
and say da great books for menz was all fools.
yes, yes, i did very good on my gmats
dey bernenakifed my soul away, left me with cats
zlzlzzozozozo
Nobody here has studied differential calculus? Amazing. If you look at the marriage rates, and understand differential calculus, there is absolute proof of marriage strike.
Number of Marriages per 1,000
Unmarried Women Age 15 and
Older, by Year, United States:
1922 99 (found on Web)
1960 73.5
1961 72.2
1962 71.2
1963 73.4
1964 74.6
1965 75.0
1966 75.6
1967 76.4
1968 79.1
1969 80.0
1970 76.5
1972 77.9
1975 66.9
1977 63.6
1980 61.4
1983 59.9
1985 56.2
1987 55.7
1990 54.5
1991 54.2
1992 53.3
1993 52.3
1995 50.8
2000 46.5
2004 39.9
2007 39.2 (Rutgers 2009)
2008 37.4 (Rutgers 2009)
2009 36 (UVA 2010; project moved from Rutgers)
2010 34.2 Unverified estimate from Pew
If you see the drop in marriage rates, it is mathematically impossible to NOT be a marriage strike.
Dalrock is a great writer, and gives us many good facts. But, failure to talk to someone who knows basic calculus as we have asked him many times is like a big zit on Elizabeth Taylor’s nose.
As far as California, a few short years ago some group did indeed obtain the raw figures for divorce and brute force counted them. It came out to 780 divorces per 1000 marriages. I think Lee on DGM found those figures.
This is why the PC folks in CA decided to keep it a secret. Millions of men avoid marriage because they think the odds of divorce are 40%. What would they do if they realize it is 780 per 1000 marriages?
The reason differential calculus was developed and those who need to know mathematics are forced to study it, is so you can tell right away what is happening, instead of having to wait 15 years then be surprised when there is a big unexpected change. Which is what you guys are doing.
>>Uncle Elmer says:
July 4, 2012 at 6:21 pm
This just in :
Living alone after divorce can feel like liberation. But trust me, it turns into aching loneliness
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2168926/Living-divorce-feel-like-liberation-But-trust-turns-aching-loneliness.html
###
In the mid-90’s, before I retired, a fellow worker, lets call him Larry, told me the following story. His wife worked with a number of women. An older woman kept complaining her husband wasn’t worth much. He just came home and sat and watched TV.
Her fellow workers started telling her, “Divorce him. We’ll tell you how to take him to the cleaners.”
They did.
Then, the newly divorced woman came in every day, totally miserable, saying, “I’m so lonely. So lonely I could die.”
Larry’s wife, also older, admitted she had contemplated divorce, too, after all the chatter from the women, until she saw how miserable that woman was. She told him right out, “You are better than nothing!”
He laughed as he told me the story. I guarantee you, if my wife said something like that, I would not be laughing. And, neither would she after I did what she deserved.
I was just thinking about this. I have made no secret of my life in Mexico. In the US a lot of older men are also living alone, and a lot are miserable, which relates to the high suicide rate among older men. But, what can an older man do in the US to avoid being alone? A land whale, to spend all his money and tell him what clothes to wear, when to get up; when to go to sleep; and what to do all day? Pistols, please, ahem.
At 70, I am in fairly good shape, thanks to five years on very low carb. My reputation as a person is well known in this little village. If I became a widow, there is a good chance I could be living with a 20 something widow with several kids, or a Type I unwed mother, (Type I had only one child) within a short time.
At the same time, there is at least one woman close to 50 that I find attractive. Remember what Ben Franklin told his nephew about older women? Let me add mature women are much less likely to CHANGE personalities on you. Not that I would marry anyone any age. Free Union would suit me fine. And, among older women it is even possible to find one who will stay in her home and participate in conjugal visits.
You do not need to die alone in the US. It is not easy to expat, but for those who can life can be good.
Indeed. It’s been so long since I’ve messed with it, I really couldn’t have applied it to the data as presented and made a convincing argument, but I know enough from eyeballing the data to know the conclusions have been wrong (a clue as to the issue: there’s multiple variable elements in the data) – since I couldn’t make the argument I remained silent. The thing I’ve learned though when I was in my college schooling taking math and science classes is how amazingly wrong one can be when you take to a data set and apply the wrong methodologies in trying to solve the problem. Especially dramatic were the times that I mistakenly applied algebra and trigonometry to a problem when I should have applied calculus concepts.
But I usually hate statistics anyway since you can make so many different conclusions out of them, which while erroneous are generally not addressable and verifiable by the majority of people involved.
@Anon Age 70
You’ve been making the same claim for nearly two years now yet you have never proved what I got wrong. At some point, after a certain number of years, the onus needs to be on you to prove me wrong. There is no need to apply calculus, because the metric itself is not suited to measure what you are trying to measure. Anyone who wants to prove me wrong is welcome to do so. All I ask is that they read what I’ve actually written here, here, and here and then explain what I got wrong.
With this said, the irony is we are generally on the same page about the future. I don’t see a mass/intentional marriage strike by men, but as I’ve said for two years now it strikes me as very unlikely that women will be able to delay marriage en masse as they have and still end up with the kinds of marriage rates the cohorts just ten years prior ended up with. In addition, I found recent evidence that it isn’t working out for them which I shared in a post the other week.
@Dalrock – This is a IMHO.
I suspect the one of why marriage rates are down is for the simple reason of increase in cohabitation. This corresponds to the increase rate of increase of children out of wedlock and single unwed mothers (entrapment is pretty stupid reason to force marriage).
The conclusion is still the same (marriage rates are decreasing and will continue to do so) but now with collateral damage.
From: http://www.savethemales.ca/001904.html
“How the Rockefellers Re-Engineered Women
February 1, 2007
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
Feminism is an excellent example of how the Rockefeller mega cartel uses the awesome power of the mass media (i.e. propaganda.) to control society.
[D: Extended quote truncated]
“When it comes to divorce rates in the US conventional wisdom is that it peaked around 1980 and has been declining ever since.”
The 80s was when Americans started to live together without getting married, so that may also account for the perceived decline in divorce.
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I am currently writing a book on how men should relate to women. I believe the current relationship counselers have it all wrong. I won’t get into the details here because you will have to read the book. It will be titled “How to Act Like a Man”. My point today is that if we all agree that marriage is decreasing because of cohabitation and that cohabitation separations are increasing then the total of unsuccessful unions (whether they are married or not) is on the increase. I have an original point of view of why this is but again you will have to read the book.
Jack Maleson
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Despite the significant stress associated with divorce, approximately 75-80 percent of children develop into well-adjusted adults with no lasting psychological or behavioral problems. They achieve their education and career goals and have the ability to build close relationships. One study by Amato (1999) even estimated that “42 percent of young adults from divorced families” received highest well-being scores as compared to young adults from nondivorced families. Therefore, the hardship and pain associated with their parents’ divorce made them stronger individuals. Children from high conflict families oftentimes benefit the most from the divorce of their parents as it represents an opportunity for a better life.
Thus (Richard Johnson above) speaks a law attorney. Always good to go to work knowing that one is making for a better world.
Family Law Attorney,
Wrong. Lies.
certainly not 75-80%. 75-80% of PEOPLE (regardless of their parents marital status) do no acheive their education and career goals nor do they build close relationships.
Lies.
What is a “well being score?” Define that mr family law attorney. I understand you are a schill for your “industry” and the manosphere doing all that it can to change divorce law might scare the crap out of you because then you don’t eat, but lies like you just posted do not fly here. We live in the real world and I’ve seen what has happened to the children of all of my friends whose wives frivorced them. Rest assured mr family law attorney, they are not strong individuals and their lives are not those of well being.
No doubt about it: divorce is good for you as I suppose is any form of misery or trauma. Puts me in mind of that Johnny Cash song about a guy called Mary.
“A Boy Named Sue”?
That’s the one.
Yea, they’ll push divorce=good now, as well as bombard you with pre-determined studies to show just how good it is for your, I mean… her, children.
Divorce! It’s for the children! What Churchian cannot get behind that, I ask you!?
Did you hear that, everybody? Divorce is actually good for society! Everyone should get divorced. Some kooky anonymous idiot said so, so I guess we can all go home.
BTW: Same kooky “anonymous” misinterpreted Amato.
Demographic surveys have shown that young adults who experienced parental divorce during childhood or adolescence had fewer years of education, earned less money, and were more likely to be unemployed (Amato, 1999). In addition, they were likely to have more sexual partners (Garbardi & Rosen, 1991) and to marry and bear children earlier than were young adults from nondivorced families (McLanahan & Bumpass, 1988). Data are accumulating that show higher rates of divorce among adult offspring of divorce than among those with no history of parental divorce (Amato, 1999).
This higher incidence of troubled marriages and divorce among this population has been attributed (Amato, 1999; 2000) to poorer parental models of interpersonal behavior, which may lead to difficulties in forming stable, satisfying, intimate, and trusting relationships with a spouse.
The whole paper is well worth reading…
http://www.edu.haifa.ac.il/personal/mscharf/pdf/parental_divorce_young_adult.pdf
Regards, Boxer
No actual divorce attorney would show up here. lol. I wager it’s some anonymous kook who is socking up to have some fun.