Marital separation and divorce

1. Marital separation and divorce Is marriage: 1. a voluntary contract that can be ended by either partner; 2. a lifetime commitment “til death do us part?” (How did the women in Promises I Can Keep see it?) Gallup poll: “Do you believe that an unhappy marriage should be maintained for the sake of the children?” Sociology 1201

2. Divorce: Trends and Comparisons • U.S. Rates (why measure divorce this way?) • 1960: 9 per 1000 married women • 1970: 15 • 1980: 23 • 1990: 21 • 2000: 19 • 2005: 16 • 2009: 16 Sociology 1201

3. Why the rapid increase? • Legal changes: “no fault marriage” • Changing expectations: “best friend” • Cultural emphasis: self-fulfillment Women’s employment trends • Men’s employment trends Why the rapid increase? Why the leveling off? Sociology 1201

4. Correlates of Divorce • Family income • Education • Age at first marriage! Who initiates divorce? 2/3-3/4 initiated by the wife? Ideas about why? Sociology 1201

5. Last year’s 1201 class: divorce/split Sociology 1201

6. Last year’s class: remarry? Sociology 1201

7. Should the laws be changed to make divorce more difficult? The General Social Survey Divkids, divnow, divifkid, divlaw Sociology 1201

8. How serious are the issues that usually precipitate a divorce? Arlene Skolnick: “Grounds for Marriage”, from Family in Transition, 2005. Longitudinal study of couples over a 24 year period. • Each spouse was interviewed in 1958(age 30 or 37) and again in 1970 and 1982 • …“most striking impression from following these marriages through long periods of time is the great potential for change in human relationships.” • Almost 1/3 divorced but “many unhappy couples remained married long enough to outgrow their earlier difficulties.” Sociology 1201

9. Robert Weis: Marital Separation, • Research basis: Seminar for the separated at Harvard • Common Themes: wrong from the start, wanting different things, serious failings in spouse (including mental illness), sexual infidelity • Impact on self (symbolic interaction) • Betrayal and duplicity • Direct attacks on self • Obsessive review • “Accounts” … we tell our own story, to ourselves and often to family and friends (symbolic interactionism) Sociology 1201

10. Diane Vaughn, Uncoupling • Research basis: Interviews with 103 divorced or separated men or women • Her own divorce: “Rather than an abrupt ending, ours appeared in retrospect to have been a gradual transition. Long before we physically separated, we had been separating socially—developing separate friends, experiences, and futures” Sociology 1201

11. Vaughn: common patterns • 1. Harboring secret unhappiness • 2. Making the initial disclosure • 3. Pursuing outside involvements • 4. Accentuating the negative • 5. Deciding to separate • 6. Going public Sociology 1201

12. Wallerstein and Blakeslee: Second Chances • Began in 1971, with 60 families, including 131 children, aged 2-18 • Recruited by advertisements in newspapers…counseling as benefit of participating in a long-term study • More educated, more affluent, more white than population as a whole • In early stages of divorce Sociology 1201

13. Second Chances for Adults • Few adults anticipate accurately how arduous and depleting divorce will be • At five year point, half of men and 2/3 of women content with quality of their lives; but half of men and 1/3 of women felt stalled or even more unhappy than during failed marriage • At ten-year point, half of women and 1/3 of men still intensely angry with ex-spouse Sociology 1201

14. Parents and kids • Unlike most crises, many of these parents were unable to protect their kids first in this crisis. • By ten-year point, 60% of the children over 18 seemed to be on a downward trajectory (in terms of education and social class) compared with their fathers and as they reached college age, few received any assistance from their noncustodial fathers Sociology 1201

15. Major critics of Wallerstein • Cherlin and Fursternburg, Divided Families • Lack of representative sampling • Lack of a control group of kids not experiencing divorce • Basis for their book, Divided Familes, based on National Survey of Children, in which representative sample of parents and children are interviewed at five year intervals Sociology 1201

16. Fading Fathers • Five years after divorce: nearly half of kids do not have contact with their fathers even once a year • Why? Child support issues (depending on social class), parenting skills of fathers, very part-time parenting Sociology 1201

17. How did they measure child well-being? • NSC data: In the last four years, has your child had any behavior problems at school resulting in your being asked to come in? • 34% of children of divorce vs. 20% of children whose parents had not divorced • Children of divorce certainly doing no worse than children in intact, high contact homes Sociology 1201

18. Kurz, For Richer, for Poorer • Research basis: interviews with a random sample of 129 mothers who obtained divorces through the Philadelphia family court. • Only 19% cited personal satisfaction as the reason for the divorce; 81% cited domestic violence, drug or alcohol abuse, sexual infidelity, or other serious reasons Sociology 1201

19. Bad to Cherlin and Furstenburg • Female-headed families six times more likely to be poor. • Child support system improving but still not generous, at least compared with the British system (where Cherlin got funded for a large-scale study of divorce) Sociology 1201

20. Public Policy Recommendations • Reduce conflict between parents: Implement primary caretaker standard for custody • Award joint custody cautiously, as it is dependent on a level of cooperation that many divorcing parents have not shown • Help custodial parent function better by improving child support and collections Sociology 1201

21. The Case for Divorce: V. Rutter • Are there some cases where divorce is better for the kids? • R: “If my now-divorced parents had been happily married, life would have been different and a divorce would have been a big loss.... But that wasn’t the case. They treated each other with contempt…” We need to ask: compared to what? Sociology 1201

22. Divorce for the kids? • “Research shows the consequences of staying in a distressed marriage for kids as well as adults are myriad in long-lived. In those cases, perhaps the line shouldn’t be “stay together for the kids” but “get divorced for the kids,” not to mention the health and well-being of the parents, on whom the children depend.:” Sociology 1201

23. Resilient children of divorce • 1989: Psychologist Mavis Hetherington made a case that most children of divorce fare just as well as children from intact families. • 1989: Judith Wallerstein refuted those findings but also had a different research methodology… See p. 162-163 Sociology 1201

24. What was the worst kind of family for children? • Hetherington’s study: “The worst kind of family for a child to be raised in, in terms of mental health and behavior, was a distressed, married family.” • Andrew Cherlin: longitudinal studies in England and the United States confirmed Hethington’s findings Sociology 1201

25. Cherlin confirms Hetherington • About 10% of children overall are at risk for mental health problems; about 20-25% of children of divorce are similarly at risk. But the difference existed before the divorce. “Parents who end up divorcing are different than parents who don’t end up divorcing. They relate to each other differently; they relate to their children differently.” Sociology 1201

26. 1998: update from Cherlin • Respondents from the 1991 study had gotten 7 years older. Postdisruption effects had accumulated. The worst were financial hardship and loss of paternal involvement. • But the worst off were still the children in the distressed marriages. Amato and Sobolewski replicated these results, based on 17 year study of married and divorced families. Sociology 1201

27. Does divorce make you happy? • Title of an article by Linda Waite, which answers in the negative… Waite vs. Rutter, p. 164 • Finish “The Case for Divorce” and the shorter articles assigned for today Sociology 1201

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