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U.S. Divorce Rate at Lowest Level Since 1970
Friday, May 11, 2007
NEW YORK - By the numbers, divorce just isn't what it used to be.
Despite the common notion that America remains plagued by a divorce
epidemic, the national per capita divorce rate has declined steadily since
its peak in 1981 and is now at its lowest level since 1970.
Yet Americans aren't necessarily making better choices about their long-term
relationships. Even those who study marriage and work to make it more
successful can't decide whether the trend is grounds for celebration or
cynicism.
Some experts say relationships are as unstable as ever-and divorces are down
primarily because more couples live together without marrying. Other
researchers have documented what they call "the divorce divide," contending
that divorce rates are indeed falling substantively among college-educated
couples but not among less- affluent, less-educated couples.
"Families with two earners with good jobs have seen an improvement in their
standard of living, which leads to less tension at home and lower
probability of divorce," said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy
at Johns Hopkins University.
America's divorce rate began climbing in the late 1960s and skyrocketed
during the '70s and early '80s, as virtually every state adopted no-fault
divorce laws. The rate peaked at 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people in 1981.
But since then it's dropped by one-third, to 3.6. That's the lowest rate
since 1970.
What's fueling that decline? According to 20 scholars, marriage- promotion
experts and divorce lawyers consulted by The Associated Press, a combination
of things.
The number of couples who live together without marrying has increased
tenfold since 1960; the marriage rate has dropped by nearly 30 percent in
past 25 years; and Americans are waiting about five years longer to marry
than they did in 1970.
Adding such factors together, Patrick Fagan of the conservative Heritage
Foundation sees a bad situation.
"Cohabitation is very fragile, and when unmarried parents split, for the
child it might as well be a divorce," Fagan said. "Among those who are
marrying there's increased stability, but overall the children of the nation
are getting a rawer and rawer deal from their parents."
Other experts, however, are heartened by what they view as the increased
determination of many couples to make marriage work. Among them is Bill
Chausee of Child and Family Services of New Hampshire, which offers
marriage-strengthening programs in a state where divorces dropped more than
25 percent between 2000 and 2005.
"People don't see marriage problems as some sort of stigma any more," said
Chausee. "They're really interested in learning how to stay married; a lot
of them are realizing they need more skill."
Some states have made concerted efforts to combat divorce with publicly
funded marriage education campaigns, although their effectiveness remains in
question. In Oklahoma, 100,000 people have attended workshops since a
marriage initiative began in 2001, but the latest divorce figures showed no
drop, and the campaign's backers no long stress their original goal of
cutting divorce by one-third by 2010.
Wayne and Carol Sutton are among the couples who've gone to Oklahoma's
marriage workshops; they attended a half-dozen sessions earlier this year in
their hometown of Tulsa.
"This was a way to gain some insight," said Wayne Sutton, a longtime
petroleum engineer whose wife also works in the energy industry. "They tell
you to regenerate the closeness you had when you got married."
Sutton, 51, and his wife, 46, married in 1995 and have a 9-year-old son.
"We're like any marriage," he said. "We've had rocky periods and Cloud Nine
periods. ... We decided a long time ago were not going to desert each other;
we were going to stay together no matter what."
The Bush administration believes such programs have merit-its Healthy
Marriage initiative has disbursed more than $200 million nationwide in the
past five years. Bill Coffin, the Department of Health and Human Services'
special assistant for marriage education, is convinced the programs are a
factor in the declining divorce rate.
"The word is getting out that marriage doesn't have to be a crap shoot-it's
not the luck of the draw," Coffin said. "It's how you deal with the
inevitable conflict and anger in marriage."
He subscribes to the theory that better-educated, wealthier couples have
better odds of success in marriage.
"What we're doing is making sure the poor have access to some help and
support," Coffin said. "So many people never heard of marriage education
before."
One of the researchers whose studies detected the "divorce divide" is
University of Maryland sociologist Steve Martin. Comparing marriages from
early 1970s to those of the early '90s, Martin found that the rate of
breakups within 10 years of marriage dropped by one-third among
college-educated women while remaining stable among less- educated women.
"Overall, marriages will become more stable only if the lower two- thirds of
the population starts behaving like the top third," Martin said. "There's a
lot of debate-is that possible? Can marriage training or other programs give
all couples the sort of relationship skills that people imagine college
graduates have?"
Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State
College in Olympia, Wash., says divorces are dropping in the
college-educated sector because many spouses "are learning how to negotiate
marriages based on less rigid gender roles than in the past."
"College-educated wives are more likely to work than less-educated wives,
and a recent study found that unlike the past, a wife's work now tends to
stabilize marriage," she said.
Glenn Stanton, a family policy expert with the conservative ministry Focus
on the Family, suggested one factor behind the declining divorce rate was
simply a societal revulsion toward the high rates of recent decades.
"In the past 30 years, we've had more divorce than any culture has ever
had," he said. "A lot of young adults now are coming out of the family
upheaval of the '70s, and they are cohabiting out of fear. They don't want
to mess up the nice clean carpet of marriage-they saw their parents do
that."
Amber Settle and her partner, Andre Berthiaume, are among the couples who
have opted not to marry, even as they celebrate 10 years of living together
and raise a 3-year-old daughter in Chicago. Each teaches computer science at
DePaul University, each is 39, each has parents who divorced.
"We decided a long time ago that marriage wasn't for us," Settle said. "We
have a number of friends who got married, and we've supported them. But it's
not something we want to do."
Among their reasons, she said, was their belief it would be unfair to get
married until same-sex couples across the country had the same opportunity.
Observing her married friends, Settle sees some wonderful relationships and
some on the rocks. Married or cohabiting, she said, "you have to work hard
at a relationship to make it work."
The per capita divorce rate is different from another method of
calculation-the percentage of marriages that will eventually end in divorce
or separation. Many experts discount the popular notion that one of two U.S.
marriages end in divorce, and suggest the breakup rate, which is hard to
calculate, has stabilized in recent years at between 40 percent and 45
percent.
Gaetano Ferro of New Canaan, Conn., president of the American Academy of
Matrimonial Lawyers, says overall national trends haven't had a noticeable
effect on his fellow divorce lawyers.
"I've been active in the academy two decades plus," Ferro said. "I've never
heard anyone say, 'We're in trouble. There are fewer divorces.'"
But North Carolina divorce lawyer Lee Rosen, while reporting that business
for his large firm is booming, says he has noticed a trend toward increased
realism and civility among couples with marital strains. Many seek mediation
as they split, and arrange for joint legal custody of their children.
"People are coexisting more peacefully, whether they stay together or come
apart," Rosen said. "They are more contemplative and serious about their
relationships, and I see people stay together who once would have allowed
the marriage to unravel."
U.S. Divorce Rate at Lowest Level Since 1970
Friday, May 11, 2007
NEW YORK - By the numbers, divorce just isn't what it used to be.
Despite the common notion that America remains plagued by a divorce
epidemic, the national per capita divorce rate has declined steadily since
its peak in 1981 and is now at its lowest level since 1970.
Yet Americans aren't necessarily making better choices about their long-term
relationships. Even those who study marriage and work to make it more
successful can't decide whether the trend is grounds for celebration or
cynicism.
Some experts say relationships are as unstable as ever-and divorces are down
primarily because more couples live together without marrying. Other
researchers have documented what they call "the divorce divide," contending
that divorce rates are indeed falling substantively among college-educated
couples but not among less- affluent, less-educated couples.
"Families with two earners with good jobs have seen an improvement in their
standard of living, which leads to less tension at home and lower
probability of divorce," said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy
at Johns Hopkins University.
America's divorce rate began climbing in the late 1960s and skyrocketed
during the '70s and early '80s, as virtually every state adopted no-fault
divorce laws. The rate peaked at 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people in 1981.
But since then it's dropped by one-third, to 3.6. That's the lowest rate
since 1970.
What's fueling that decline? According to 20 scholars, marriage- promotion
experts and divorce lawyers consulted by The Associated Press, a combination
of things.
The number of couples who live together without marrying has increased
tenfold since 1960; the marriage rate has dropped by nearly 30 percent in
past 25 years; and Americans are waiting about five years longer to marry
than they did in 1970.
Adding such factors together, Patrick Fagan of the conservative Heritage
Foundation sees a bad situation.
"Cohabitation is very fragile, and when unmarried parents split, for the
child it might as well be a divorce," Fagan said. "Among those who are
marrying there's increased stability, but overall the children of the nation
are getting a rawer and rawer deal from their parents."
Other experts, however, are heartened by what they view as the increased
determination of many couples to make marriage work. Among them is Bill
Chausee of Child and Family Services of New Hampshire, which offers
marriage-strengthening programs in a state where divorces dropped more than
25 percent between 2000 and 2005.
"People don't see marriage problems as some sort of stigma any more," said
Chausee. "They're really interested in learning how to stay married; a lot
of them are realizing they need more skill."
Some states have made concerted efforts to combat divorce with publicly
funded marriage education campaigns, although their effectiveness remains in
question. In Oklahoma, 100,000 people have attended workshops since a
marriage initiative began in 2001, but the latest divorce figures showed no
drop, and the campaign's backers no long stress their original goal of
cutting divorce by one-third by 2010.
Wayne and Carol Sutton are among the couples who've gone to Oklahoma's
marriage workshops; they attended a half-dozen sessions earlier this year in
their hometown of Tulsa.
"This was a way to gain some insight," said Wayne Sutton, a longtime
petroleum engineer whose wife also works in the energy industry. "They tell
you to regenerate the closeness you had when you got married."
Sutton, 51, and his wife, 46, married in 1995 and have a 9-year-old son.
"We're like any marriage," he said. "We've had rocky periods and Cloud Nine
periods. ... We decided a long time ago were not going to desert each other;
we were going to stay together no matter what."
The Bush administration believes such programs have merit-its Healthy
Marriage initiative has disbursed more than $200 million nationwide in the
past five years. Bill Coffin, the Department of Health and Human Services'
special assistant for marriage education, is convinced the programs are a
factor in the declining divorce rate.
"The word is getting out that marriage doesn't have to be a crap shoot-it's
not the luck of the draw," Coffin said. "It's how you deal with the
inevitable conflict and anger in marriage."
He subscribes to the theory that better-educated, wealthier couples have
better odds of success in marriage.
"What we're doing is making sure the poor have access to some help and
support," Coffin said. "So many people never heard of marriage education
before."
One of the researchers whose studies detected the "divorce divide" is
University of Maryland sociologist Steve Martin. Comparing marriages from
early 1970s to those of the early '90s, Martin found that the rate of
breakups within 10 years of marriage dropped by one-third among
college-educated women while remaining stable among less- educated women.
"Overall, marriages will become more stable only if the lower two- thirds of
the population starts behaving like the top third," Martin said. "There's a
lot of debate-is that possible? Can marriage training or other programs give
all couples the sort of relationship skills that people imagine college
graduates have?"
Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State
College in Olympia, Wash., says divorces are dropping in the
college-educated sector because many spouses "are learning how to negotiate
marriages based on less rigid gender roles than in the past."
"College-educated wives are more likely to work than less-educated wives,
and a recent study found that unlike the past, a wife's work now tends to
stabilize marriage," she said.
Glenn Stanton, a family policy expert with the conservative ministry Focus
on the Family, suggested one factor behind the declining divorce rate was
simply a societal revulsion toward the high rates of recent decades.
"In the past 30 years, we've had more divorce than any culture has ever
had," he said. "A lot of young adults now are coming out of the family
upheaval of the '70s, and they are cohabiting out of fear. They don't want
to mess up the nice clean carpet of marriage-they saw their parents do
that."
Amber Settle and her partner, Andre Berthiaume, are among the couples who
have opted not to marry, even as they celebrate 10 years of living together
and raise a 3-year-old daughter in Chicago. Each teaches computer science at
DePaul University, each is 39, each has parents who divorced.
"We decided a long time ago that marriage wasn't for us," Settle said. "We
have a number of friends who got married, and we've supported them. But it's
not something we want to do."
Among their reasons, she said, was their belief it would be unfair to get
married until same-sex couples across the country had the same opportunity.
Observing her married friends, Settle sees some wonderful relationships and
some on the rocks. Married or cohabiting, she said, "you have to work hard
at a relationship to make it work."
The per capita divorce rate is different from another method of
calculation-the percentage of marriages that will eventually end in divorce
or separation. Many experts discount the popular notion that one of two U.S.
marriages end in divorce, and suggest the breakup rate, which is hard to
calculate, has stabilized in recent years at between 40 percent and 45
percent.
Gaetano Ferro of New Canaan, Conn., president of the American Academy of
Matrimonial Lawyers, says overall national trends haven't had a noticeable
effect on his fellow divorce lawyers.
"I've been active in the academy two decades plus," Ferro said. "I've never
heard anyone say, 'We're in trouble. There are fewer divorces.'"
But North Carolina divorce lawyer Lee Rosen, while reporting that business
for his large firm is booming, says he has noticed a trend toward increased
realism and civility among couples with marital strains. Many seek mediation
as they split, and arrange for joint legal custody of their children.
"People are coexisting more peacefully, whether they stay together or come
apart," Rosen said. "They are more contemplative and serious about their
relationships, and I see people stay together who once would have allowed
the marriage to unravel."
