Americans are troubled about the number of divorces in the nation. Although tolerance of divorce has increased considerably since the 1950s, a substantial number of Americans still believe that divorce is morally wrong (Dugan 2017). And the proportion of those who agree that a divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can’t seem to work out their differences decreased from about 45 percent in 2002 to a little over 38 percent in 2013 (Daugherty and Copen 2016).

So just how high is the rate in the United States? Articles and commentators in the media continue to decry the “fact” that half of all marriages end in divorce, which, as we pointed out in chapter 1, is not true. It is true, however, that your chances of divorce are higher in the United States than most other nations (World Population Review 2021).

Divorce Rates

The government has measured the divorce rate in two ways: as the number of divorces per 1,000 population and as the number of divorces per 1,000 married women 15 years and older. While the latter gives us a somewhat better estimate of the proportion of marriages that fail, the data are not collected and published regularly. However, the pattern of the two figures is quite similar to that shown for rate per 1,000 population in Figure 14.1. We know, therefore, the general trend of divorce rates. We also know that hundreds of thousands of couples divorce each year, although we do not know the precise number because the figures are based on state reports and a few states no longer tabulate the data.

With regard to the trends, Figure 14.1 shows the dramatic increase in rates in the 1960s and 1970s, with the peak coming from 1979 to 1981. In 1974, for the first time in our history, more marriages ended in divorce than through the death of a spouse. Although many people believe that the high rates of the 1970s and early 1980s were a striking break with tradition, there has actually been a fairly regular trend over the past century or so, a trend represented by a rising curve. There are variations, of course: Those who married during the 1950s have lower-than-expected rates of divorce, while those who married during the 1960s and 1970s have higher-than-expected rates (where expected means the rate we would have according to the long-term trend line). However, the high rates of the 1970s are modest rather than dramatic deviations from the long-term trend.

After 1980, rates tended to decline. By 2019, the rate was 2.7 per 1,000 population, down considerably from the high of 5.3 in 1979 and 1981 and lower than any since 1970. As table 14.1 shows, the rate per 1,000 married women shows the same pattern.

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Table 14.1Divorces, 1960–2020

Table Summary: A table shows the divorces that have occurred between the years 19 50 and 20 19. The first column shows the divorces which include the total (1,000), rate per (1,000), married woman, 15 years and older; percent divorced 18 years and over: Male and Female. Columns two to eleventh show the data for the years 19 60, 19 65, 19 70, 19 75, 19 80, 19 85, 19 90, 19 95, 2000, and 20 20, respectively.

Divorces	1960	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000	2020
Total (1,000)	393	479	708	1026	1189	1190	1182	1169	944	782
Rate per 1,000 married women, 15 years and older	9.2	10.6	14.9	20.3	22.6	21.7	20.9	19.8	18.8	n.a.
Percent Divorced 18 years and over
Male	2.0	2.5	2.5	3.7	5.2	6.5	7.2	8.3	8.8	9.5
Female	2.9	3.3	3.9	5.3	7.1	8.7	9.3	10.3	10.8	12.1

n.a. = not available
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, various editions; National Center for Health Statistics website.

The table also shows the proportion of Americans who are divorced during particular years. Of course, these figures do not tell us how many people have ever been separated or divorced. Some of those who are reported as divorced in a particular year will be married in another year and vice versa. The point is, divorce rates are very hard to calculate accurately; even the experts don’t always agree on the trends (Kennedy and Ruggles 2014). Twenty percent of divorces occur within the first five years of marriage, 32 percent occur within 10 years, and 48 percent occur within 20 years (Avvo Staff 2015).

What happens in a family that is in the process of breaking up? What stages bring an intimate relationship to the point of disruption? What is the meaning of the disruption? Researchers have identified a number of features in the process that are common to most divorcing couples. They also tend to apply to cohabiting and same-sex couples who break up after living together for a number of years.

Toward Marital Dissolution

While few if any of those who “fall in love” expect to fall out of it, many do. They may experience disaffection, which is

the gradual loss of emotional attachment, including a decline in caring about the partner, an emotional estrangement, and an increasing sense of apathy and indifference toward one’s spouse (Kayser 1993:6).

Dissolution may follow such disaffection. Not all disaffected people divorce, and not all divorces involve disaffection. However, when people do divorce, they are likely to go through the four phases first identified by Ponzetti and Cate (1986): recognition, discussion, action, and postdissolution.

Recognition

Recognition begins when one or both spouses become aware of serious problems. A spouse may feel discontent or dissatisfaction and realize that the feeling is sufficiently strong to call the relationship into question. Frequently, recognition occurs when marital stress and open conflict are followed by a period of cold war between the spouses.

However, the period of recognition may occur very early. In her interviews with disaffected people who divorced, Kayser (1993:29) concluded that “the ink is barely dry on the marriage license when doubts and disillusionment about marriage and the partner can begin to set in.” Forty percent of her respondents said that doubts occurred within the first six months, and 60 percent had doubts within the first year.

What caused such doubts? The most frequent causes given by Kayser’s respondents were the spouse’s controlling behavior, lack of responsibility, and lack of emotional support. Controlling behavior involves such things as making decisions without consulting the spouse or taking into account the spouse’s opinion. Lack of responsibility refers to such things as driving while drunk, getting fired from a job for just cause, spending excessive amounts of time with friends, and leaving children unattended. Lack of emotional support involves behavior that suggests a lack of concern and care for the spouse, particularly during such stressful times as pregnancy, childbirth, or the death of a family member.

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These early doubts intensified when the troubling behavior continued, leading to anger, hurt, and disillusionment. The offended spouse became deeply aware of his or her partner’s flaws and recognized that the marriage had taken an unexpected and undesirable turn. In some cases, the offended spouse believed that the partner had changed after the marriage. What had mainly changed, Kayser (1993:33) notes, was not the partner “but the respondent’s perception” of his or her partner. The changed perception led to a definition of the marriage as moving in a very different direction than expected and than could be tolerated.

Discussion

Discussion is the period during which one or both spouses begin to share the marital problems with others—friends, relatives, a counselor, and often each other. The discussion is not merely a sharing of information but an opportunity to redefine the relationship. The partner may be defined in negative terms, and the history of the relationship may be reconstructed as a series of negative experiences. Gratifying experiences also may be redefined: “Yes, we had a good time on that trip but that was only because we were with friends.”

Discussion with the partner involves the breaking down of the pretense that all is well with the marriage. The initiator, the partner who first feels but doesn’t openly acknowledge discontent, finally discloses that discontent and does so with sufficient force and clarity that the partner cannot deny the fact that the marriage is in serious trouble. With such a confrontation, conflict increases significantly in the discussion period. One of the functions of such conflict is to maintain the relationship for a time. Conflict at least means that there is interaction. But the conflict also serves to underscore that there are problems in the relationship.

During the discussion period, the discontented spouse will find a “transitional person,” someone who can help him or her move from the old life to a new one. The transitional person may be a temporary lover but also may be a friend who can provide emotional support. The problem with the relationship has now become a public matter.

Some effort may be made to save the marriage during this period. Once the confrontation has taken place and the problem is openly acknowledged, the noninitiating partner may ask for an opportunity to try to save the relationship. The initiator feels that he or she has already tried but may be willing to give the partner a chance to try also. Yet in many cases, the odds are against any change for the better. The initiator has been making the transition to a new life for a period of time. The initiator is already a somewhat different person, with a new ideology, perhaps new friends, and new commitments. Many initiators tell their partners during this period, “You don’t know me any more.” If the initiator has gone far enough in the process of transition to a new life, he or she may allow the partner to try to save the relationship but will not allow the partner to succeed. Letting the noninitiating partner try but fail can be a way of getting him or her to agree that the intimate bond has been severed irreparably.

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Action

In the period of action, one of the spouses secures a lawyer in order to legally dissolve the marriage. Many are already preparing for independence by such things as paying their own bills and not relying on their partner for emotional support or companionship (Kayser 1993). Separation is also likely in this period. There are a number of reasons why a married couple might separate for a period of time, including military deployment and incarceration. Here, we are only dealing with the separation that occurs in a troubled marriage where one or both partners are considering divorce. Such separation does not necessarily lead to divorce. Some couples are able to use it as a cooling-off period that allows them to deal more rationally with their differences and effect a reconciliation. A couple may also get involved in a long-term, unresolved separation. They neither reconcile nor divorce.

Often, however, separation does culminate in a divorce. The partners may or may not have anticipated and/or desired divorce as the outcome. The separation may occur either before or after a lawyer is consulted. In any case, separation is likely to be a difficult experience, a form of a grieving process with all the pain (including even suicidal thoughts) involved in loss (Knox and Corte 2007).

Once separated, most women make the transition to divorce quickly: 84 percent do it within three years and 91 percent do it within five years (Bramlett and Mosher 2002). Actually, although some people advocate, and some states mandate, a mandatory time of separation before divorce in order to maximize the possibility of reconciliation, longer times of separation are associated with increased rates of violence between the partners (Stolzenberg and D’Alessio 2007). The risk of such violence indicates that it is best to have a short time between the separation and the divorce.

The likelihood of divorce following separation varies by race and ethnicity (Bramlett and Mosher 2002). White women are more likely to divorce once they are separated than are African Americans or Hispanics. As many as 15 percent of Hispanic and Black couples who separate remain in separation for the long term (10 or more years).

Difficulties mount once a lawyer is secured and the divorce petition is filed. At this point in the process, couples frequently struggle over such things as division of property and child custody. Moreover, they often are anxious about the separation and have lingering uncertainties about whether dissolution is really in their best interests.

This period also can last much longer than people anticipate if there are disagreements about the settlement. For example, community property laws do not make financial settlements an automatic matter. Thus, there can be considerable wrangling over the division of property and intense bitterness about the outcome.

Postdissolution

The postdissolution period begins when both spouses accept the fact that the marriage has ended. During this period, the spouses probably will think about reasons for the divorce and construct some acceptable rationale for what has happened. Many people do not accept completely the fact that the marriage has ended until the former spouse is coupled with a new partner.

As we noted in chapter 1, the great majority of Americans place a high value on marriage and family life. And a large majority indicate satisfaction with their own marriages. Why, then, is the divorce rate as high as it is? What factors make it more or less likely that someday you may be involved in a divorce?

Sociodemographic Factors

If a couple files for divorce, you might wonder what the spouses did to bring about the breakup. Social scientists have found that it is not just what people do that helps account for the failure of a marriage, but also such things as their socioeconomic status, race, religion, and other sociodemographic factors.

Socioeconomic Status

An inverse relationship exists between socioeconomic status and divorce rates. That is, the higher your status, as measured by education and income, the less likely you are to divorce (Zuckerman 2020). A national study of women who were 46 years old reported that 44.4 percent of those with less than a high-school diploma had divorced, compared to 20.9 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree or higher (Aughinbaugh, Robles, and Sun 2013). Similarly, a study of women over a 20-year period found that the divorce rates were highest among those with less than a high-school education and lowest among those with four or more years of college (Martin 2006). In fact, although the divorce rate has declined overall, it actually rose for those without a high-school diploma. Finally, data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed that the proportion of women divorced within 15 years of marriage was 65 percent for those in families with less than $25,000 annual income, 40 percent for those with family income between $25,000 and $49,999, and 31 percent for those with a family income of $50,000 or more (Bramlett and Mosher 2002).

Undoubtedly, the financial pressures on those in lower income brackets add to the instability of their marriages. Research in the Netherlands also found financial problems to be associated with higher divorce rates (Poortman 2005).

Age at Marriage

In earlier chapters, we pointed out that one’s age at marriage is related to marital stability. Divorce is 50 percent less likely for those who marry at 25 years of age than for those who marry when they are 20 years old (DiDonato 2016). On the other hand, you can wait too long to get married. Those who marry at age 35 and above have, for reasons we do not know yet, slightly higher rates of divorce than those who marry between 25 and 34 years.

There is also another factor that affects relationship between young age and the probability of divorce. When researchers looked at the gender ideologies of a sample of ever-married women, they found that the relationship between young age and higher rates of divorce varied by ideology (Davis and Greenstein 2004). They divided the women into three types of gender ideology. Traditional women were those who agreed that a woman’s place is in the home, that she finds fulfillment in raising her children and taking care of her home, and that outside employment carries the risk of negative consequences (such as juvenile delinquency). Nontraditional women disagreed with such ideas. And a group the researchers called “transitional” agreed in part and disagreed in part.

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The researchers found that age at first marriage did not affect the likelihood of divorce for nontraditional women. Very young transitional women, however, were 57 percent more likely to experience marital disruption than transitional women who married in their early 20s. And traditional women who married younger than 18 were twice as likely to divorce as those who married at the ages of 22 to 24. Whether a woman’s age at marriage affects her chances of divorce, then, depends upon her beliefs about gender roles. Women who expect home and family to fulfill all their needs, and who grow up in a culture where divorce is common, may be willing to break up the marriage when the expected fulfillment doesn’t happen.

Race

African Americans are more likely both to separate and to divorce than are whites. In fact, African Americans have higher rates than any other racial group in the United States (Bramlett and Mosher 2002). Asian Americans have the lowest rate (a little over half the rate of whites and Hispanics). The greatest differences between African Americans and others occur in the lower socioeconomic levels, but they exist at all levels. Some scholars have suggested that because of their experience of low income, job instability, and high unemployment rates, African Americans have learned to depend less on marriage and more on the extended kin network for support. This may have established a cultural tradition in which marriage is less central and in which there is thus less commitment to the marital relationship. An alternative explanation is that African Americans still have to deal with overt and covert discrimination and rejection, leading them to be more likely to have a pileup of stressor events in their lives. The pileup, in turn, places greater strains on their marriages than on those of other races.

Social Integration

Social integration is a state of relative harmony and cohesion in a group. People who are members of an integrated group have an important source of support, a buffer against stress. We would expect, then, that social integration would help to minimize the divorce rates. Evidence exists to support that conclusion.

Religious groups provide one source of social integration. In addition, religion places great value on the family. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that the more religious people are, the less likely they are to divorce. Indeed, people with firm religious beliefs and participation, are less likely to divorce than are those who are not religious (Vaaler, Ellison, and Powers 2009; Bell et al. 2018). As Figure 14.2 shows, not only are there differences in divorce to the extent that people say religion is important to them but also according to their religious affiliation. Catholics have the lowest divorce rates among Christians, followed by fundamentalists (very conservative Protestants) and other Protestants. All groups have considerably lower rates than those who say they have “no religion.”

Social integration occurs in more than religious groups, of course. People who are integrated in their communities because they have a number of nondivorced friends and belong to a number of community organizations, will be less vulnerable to divorce.

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Children also can be an integrating factor. Marital stability tends to grow with increasing family size up to the third child but declines when family size is five or more children (Heaton 1990; Liu 2002)). Perhaps the strains of a large number of children outweigh the tendency for children to integrate a family. The integrating power of children also may vary by their gender. Using national data, Katzev, Warner, and Acock (1994) found that mothers with at least one son reported a significantly lower propensity to divorce than mothers who only had girls.

If social integration tends to minimize divorce, the lack of integration should be associated with higher rates of divorce. This may help explain why those whose parents divorced have a much higher rate of divorce themselves (Amato and DeBoer 2001). Coming from a background of disruption, they have not learned to place a high value on lifelong commitment to a partner.

Lacking the integrating power of offspring, childless couples are more prone to divorce (Weinberg 1990; Brix 2014). People also get into a situation with less integration when they move to a new community. There they are likely to be cut off from friends and family and may not become an integral part of religious or other community organizations for some time. Thus, those who move a good deal are at greater risk for marital disruption.

Changing Norms and Roles

Divorce has become more acceptable over time, both in the United States and many other nations. In the United States, we have a “divorce culture” that is rooted in our individualism and insistence on personal happiness (Whitehead 1997; Coontz 2007). Individual happiness takes priority over couple well-being. Research on newlywed women’s expectations found that the women thought of marriage mainly in terms of love and personal fulfillment, and 74 percent said they had some expectation of divorce (Campbell, Wright, and Flores 2012). Because Americans marry in order to be happy, they opt for divorce and look for happiness in a new relationship if their present marriage does not fulfill their expectations. Earlier in our history, a successful marriage was one that lasted and produced offspring. Now, a successful marriage is one that facilitates the happiness and well-being of both partners. No-fault divorce laws reflected this ideal of personal happiness for both partners. And while, as discussed earlier, the laws may have achieved some desired ends, they also are associated with an increased divorce rate of roughly 10 percent (Allen and Gallagher 2007).

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In addition, the changing roles of women are associated with higher divorce rates. Over the past few decades, as noted earlier, the divorce rates have gone down among highly educated women and up among those with the least education. Associated with this trend are more negative attitudes toward divorce among the highly educated (who used to be the most permissive group of women) and more permissive attitudes among those with the least education (Martin and Parashar 2006). Nevertheless, it is still true that women as a whole are more likely than men to initiate divorce, and they do so in other nations as well as in the United States. Both the higher rates and the tendency of women to initiate divorce are associated with the increasing economic independence of women (South 2001). In particular, wives who earn as much as or more than their husbands have higher rates of separation and divorce (Heckert, Nowak, and Snyder 1998; Liu and Vikat 2004). Of course, those with a strong commitment and a satisfying marriage will not seek a divorce. Rather, it is those in unhappy marriages who use their financial independence to escape from the union (Sayer and Bianchi 2000). In addition, women have varied ideologies about their roles, and only those with nontraditional gender ideologies show a positive relationship between number of work hours and divorce rate (Greenstein 1995).

One other way in which roles relate to marital breakup involves premarital sexual relations. Consistent with earlier research, Wolfinger (2016) found a relationship between divorce rates and the number of sexual partners a woman has before marriage. The relationship is complex (i.e., it is not a linear increase in rates with an increase in the number of partners), but five years after marriage (for women who wed in the early 2000s), 6 percent of women who were virgins when married had divorced compared to 33 percent of those who had 10 or more premarital partners. We do not know why this relationship holds, but it may be that women who marry as virgins or who have only had one sexual partner are more traditional and, therefore, less accepting of divorce.

We began the chapter with the question, “Is divorce ever good for you?” The answer, we suggested, is yes and no. There will probably be short-term negative effects. There may be long-term positive effects. The intensity of the effects depends on such things as gender and whether the individual is the initiator or the one left. Generally, initiators are likely to be more positive about the divorce than are the ones left, and females adjust better to a divorce than do males (Diedrick 1991; Sakraida 2005). Most studies focus on the negative consequences of divorce, but there are positive ones as well. We will look at the latter first.

Positive Outcomes

Although it is unlikely that anyone, even the initiator, finds divorce a painless process, there are long-term and sometimes short-term positive outcomes. Personal growth, optimism, spiritual comfort, and improved communication and conflict skills are among the benefits perceived by divorced people (Schneller and Arditti 2004; Sakraida 2005). And those in high-distress marriages may report increased life satisfaction following the divorce (Amato and Hohmann-Marriott 2007; Bourassa, Sbarra, and Whisman 2015). The children may also benefit. Undergraduates whose parents were divorced reported a number of positive outcomes, including happier parents, better relationships with parents and with siblings, and less parental conflict (Halligan, Chang, and Knox 2014).

Even if the divorce is a very traumatic experience, most people will eventually (within two to three years) adapt in a constructive way to their situation (Hetherington 2003). And some will view the divorce as a positive turning point, perhaps even a necessary step in their own well-being. For instance, Heather, who runs an art gallery, believes that her divorce set her on the road to autonomy for the first time in her life (Lauer and Lauer 1988:129). She had not established her independence before getting married:

I switched from parental control to marital control. At the age of thirty, I began to gain autonomy. At thirty-two, I rebelled. At forty, I finally became a person. I mean I finally became me, Heather, an independent human being.

She became that “independent human being” by leaving a marriage with a domineering man. She says that she feared being on her own and hesitated leaving him, but she “had to yank that safety net of marriage in order to realize that I can survive without it.”

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Not everyone is equally likely to have such a positive outcome. It is more likely to happen for females than for males, particularly those with a high level of education; those who are relatively young; those in relatively short-lived marriages; those who define the divorce as normal rather than as an abnormal failure; those with adequate income; and those holding to more nontraditional gender and marital roles. In addition, a positive outcome is more likely for those with good social support (Veevers 1991; Garvin, Kalter, and Hansell 1993; Greeff and van der Merwe 2004).

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One of the reasons given by some people for remaining in an unhappy marriage is to protect their children. Most people are aware that divorce can be a very painful experience for children. Still, is it always better for children if their parents’ marriage is intact? Just how painful is divorce for the children? These questions take on increasing importance in an age when the number of children affected by divorce is enormous. By 2020, according to the Census Bureau, 29.6 percent of the 72.9 million children under 18 in the nation lived with only one parent or with neither parent. While many of the single parents in the nation had never been married, a substantial number were the result of divorce. How are the children affected by divorce?

Short-Term Effects

In the short term, children are likely to suffer a variety of physical and emotional problems when their parents divorce. In cases of abuse or intense and constant conflict, as we indicated earlier, parental separation and divorce are beneficial to the children (Booth and Amato 2001; Strohschein 2005). Most of the time, however, the short-term consequences are negative. In addition, there is some research that indicates that the consequences are more severe for those who experience the disruption in early childhood (Cavanagh and Huston 2008).

Among the negative consequences identified by researchers are the following:

• Initial reactions to parental separation may include intense anger, self-blame, fears about the future, and loyalty conflicts as the child is pressured to take sides in the parental battle (Lee and Bax 2000; Panayotova and Anels 2016).

• Children from divorced families have more physical and emotional health problems and are at greater risk for early mortality than those from intact families (Stronschein 2005; Thuen et al. 2015; Rogers et al. 2020).

• Children from divorced families rate themselves lower in social competence and, in fact, are likely to be less sociable, have fewer friends, and be less responsive at home, school, and play (Baker, Barthelemy, and Kurdek 1993; Amato 2001; Lindsey et al. 2006).

• Children from divorced families have lower self-esteem and are more likely to be anxious, depressed, and withdrawn than those in intact families (Dawson 1991; Amato 2001).

• Children from divorced families are more likely to have eating problems and disorders (Banschick 2012).

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• Children from divorced families tend to receive less maternal warmth and empathy (the conflict and pain of most divorces leave little energy for nurturing children), which contributes to various emotional and behavior problems (Fagan and Churchill 2012).

• Intact-family children have fewer absences at school; higher popularity ratings; higher IQ, reading, spelling, and math scores, and fewer behavioral problems at school than do children from divorced families (Ham 2004; Cavanagh and Huston 2006; Sun and Li 2011).

• Children and adolescents from divorced families tend to have higher rates of substance abuse; poorer academic performance; higher rates of dropout from school; higher rates of antisocial behavior; and more negative attitudes about marriage (Hoffmann and Johnson 1998; Jeynes 2001; Breivik and Olweus 2005; Dennison and Koerner 2006; Kim 2011).

• Adolescents in families that are in the midst of a divorce report higher levels of conflict between their parents, with their parents, and with siblings (Noller et al. 2008).

These various consequences are understandable. Disruptions in intimate relationships are very stressful for all of us. In fact, the turmoil that typically precedes separation and divorce is itself a disruption. Thus, some of the consequences begin while the home is still intact (Sun and Li 2001; Arkes 2015).

The disruption may be even more stressful for children than it is for parents because children have no control over what is happening to them and see no long-term benefits to the disruption. Thus, they react with anger, depression, and anxiety, and this emotional turbulence interferes with other aspects of their lives.

In 2020, more than 21 million children lived with one or no biological parent. How does this living arrangement affect children? At the beginning of this chapter, we quoted the undergraduate student who said that the most painful part of her parents’ divorce was deciding with whom to live. She was forced to make a decision that could only hurt regardless of who she chose:

I was daddy’s girl but mother’s baby. My sister wanted to live with Mom and so did I. But my Dad wanted me to live with him. I didn’t want to be apart from my sister and my mom. So one day all four of us sat down to legalize where we’d live. My Dad asked me who I wanted to live with. I didn’t want to answer. It just killed me. I was only 10 years old. When I finally answered, it was awful. My Dad broke down and began to cry. That was the first time I’d ever seen him cry. It was devastating to me to have my Dad feel so disappointed with me.

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Custody arrangements can be very painful for both the parents and the children. For the children, any kind of arrangement involves some type of loss. For parents, losing all physical custody can be particularly painful. Thus, a study of divorced fathers found that those who had full or joint physical custody had much better emotional well-being than those who were noncustodial or who had legal status but no physical presence of the children (Bokker, Farley, and Bailey 2005). Interestingly, the arrangements have changed over time. Until relatively recently, the only arrangement was sole custody, in which one of the parents is given the responsibility for the care and raising of the child. Before the early part of the twentieth century, the parent who got such custody was the father. Fathers were the economic heads of the family and were presumed to be in a better position to care for the needs of the children.

Increasingly in the twentieth century, however, mothers were granted custody under the “tender years” doctrine, the notion that the child’s well-being is maximized by the mother’s care. By 1925, the phrase “best interests of the child” was incorporated into state laws. Until the mid-1960s, then, mothers were generally given custody, and they won custody in more than 90 percent of contested cases (Ihinger-Tallman and Pasley 1987). Unless a father could show that his former wife was unstable or unable to provide proper care, the courts routinely gave custody to the mother. The role of the father was reduced to providing financial support and to some visitation rights. Then fathers began to ask for more.

After 1988, the proportion of mothers granted sole custody fell significantly, while shared custody increased dramatically (Cancian et al. 2014). The proportion of fathers getting sole custody is small and has remained relatively stable. But some fathers do fight to get sole custody of their children. Fathers as well as mothers may find the separation from their children to be extremely painful.

Nonresident parents find it extremely difficult to have the kind of meaningful relationship with the children that most of them desire. A study of 250 Australian nonresident fathers found that the men felt powerless, marginalized in their children’s lives, and—because of the inability to have a meaningful relationship with their children—hostile toward their ex-wives (Hawthorne and Lennings 2008). Such experiences may be one reason that a third of nonresident fathers do not visit their children at all (Huang 2009).

Of course, there are also fathers who are not interested in maintaining a relationship with their children. But whatever the reason, the absence of the father is detrimental to the children. Involvement of nonresident fathers enhances the well-being of both sons and daughters, including the children’s relational skills, emotional state, and academic performance (Adamsons and Johnson 2013). Fortunately, nonresident fathers have more contact with their children than they did in the past (Amato, Meyers, and Emery 2009). This is particularly true when the fathers pay child support.

Even if nonresident fathers stay involved, however, there is another alternative that makes it far easier for both parents to participate equally in their children’s lives. That alternative is joint custody, an arrangement in which both parents share the responsibility for the care and raising of the children. In 1980, California adopted a joint custody arrangement. Other states soon followed suit.

A number of states now award joint custody unless there is some compelling reason to do otherwise. The way in which joint custody actually works out in daily life varies somewhat but it’s always a complicated matter and a potential source of conflict (when one parent wants to temporarily or permanently change the arrangement). The children may spend some time each day at two different homes, various amounts of time during the week at two different homes, differing periods of the time in each of two homes, or alternate years in each of the two homes. In other cases, joint custody does not even require shared living arrangements but is rather joint legal custody in which both parents are involved in important decisions in their child’s life.

Does joint custody resolve the problems? Does it at least provide a better way to deal with the issues? The answer seems to be yes. In an analysis of studies that compared children in sole-custody versus joint-custody situations, Bauserman (2002) found that those in joint custody were better adjusted than those in sole custody. Joint-custody children were more satisfied. They were able to avoid the struggle with the sense of loss that afflicts children in sole-custody arrangements. Other studies confirm the positive outcomes from joint custody. Compared to those in sole custody, joint-custody children tend to have better relationships with their fathers, experience less parenting stress and conflict, have higher emotional and relational well-being, and enjoy better physical health (Bauserman 2012; Nielsen 2014).

Joint custody is also more satisfying to the parents, who report less current and past conflict than do sole-custody parents (Bauserman 2002). Fathers who have joint custody are more satisfied than noncustodial fathers because they have more contact with their children. And being more satisfied makes it more likely that the father will comply with child-support obligations.

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Parental satisfaction is crucial, for the adjustment of children depends in large part on the way in which the parents relate to them and to each other. Joint custody, of course, means that the ex-spouses will continue to interact more than they would have under sole custody. If their interaction is one of ongoing conflict, the joint-custody arrangement may be worse for the child than sole custody. If the parents can relate to each other without anger and conflict, the children will usually prefer joint custody. They find the benefits of maintaining intimate contact with both parents worth the hassles of living alternately in two homes.

How can both parents and children cope effectively with the disruption of their intimate relationships? How can they maximize their chances of eventually turning the divorce into something positive for themselves?

For children, adjustment depends in part on the adjustment and the behavior of their parents (Spruijt, Goede, and Vandervalk 2004; Wood, Repetti, and Roesch 2004). Adolescents do best when they are able to maintain strong ties with both the mother and the father; they have fewer emotional and relational problems than those with weak ties, particularly those with weak ties to both parents (King and Sobolewski 2006).

Children’s well-being is enhanced when fathers pay child support and exercise warm, authoritative parenting (Amato and Gilbreth 1999). Children also adjust better when the custodial parent is well-adjusted (Silitsky 1996). The mother is particularly important in the child’s adjustment, even when she does not have sole custody (Buchanan, Maccoby, and Dornbusch 1996). Whatever else happens, one of the prime needs of the children is a stable home and a loving, supportive mother. The children also need to understand what the disruption is about (so that they don’t, among other things, blame themselves), and the parents need to beware of becoming so preoccupied with their own concerns that they are unaware of their children’s concerns—which are likely to be different from their own (Stewart et al. 1997).

As you would expect from our discussion about parental conflict, children adjust better to the extent that the divorce reduces the conflict between the parents. Under a sole-custody arrangement, children’s adjustment is better if there is frequent contact with the noncustodial parent and if the custodial parent is satisfied with the noncustodial parent’s relationship with the children. Obviously, children benefit when their parents grow beyond the anger and bitterness of the divorce and establish cordial relations. Finally, adolescent children adjust better to the extent that they are able to talk with their parents about their feelings and the stress they are experiencing (Afifi, Huber, and Ohs 2006). Parents can help their adolescent children by encouraging them to speak freely and openly and by responding in an understanding, supportive way.

How can parents cope with divorce and develop a relationship that is helpful to their children? To begin with, ex-spouses need to be open about their feelings and work through the anger, guilt, and anxiety that attend the disruption of an intimate relationship. Such feelings should not be repressed or denied; that only delays adjustment. But it is also important for the parents to avoid letting their anger affect the way they speak to their children about each other. A study of adolescents from divorced homes found that the children had increased mental and physical health problems when the custodial parent made negative disclosures about the other parent (Afifi and McManus 2010). The ex-spouses may have a need to vent their anger against each other, but it should not be done by condemning each other to the children.

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Finally, the parents will adjust well to a divorce, and thereby help their children to adjust, to the extent that they are able to define it as an opportunity for growth. We have seen examples of how divorce can block growth, leading to long-term stagnation as the individual persists in anger, bitterness, and depression. But divorce also can be an opportunity. In our study of watersheds in people’s lives, we found that those who successfully coped with a divorce came to a point at which they defined the disruption as an important step in their growth (Lauer and Lauer 1988:125). For instance, a number of women told about how divorce allowed them for the first time in their lives to test their capacity for self-sustained living. The discovery of their capacity for independence was an exhilarating experience. The pain of disruption eventually led to the excitement of self-discovery. For many people, then, a divorce becomes the beginning of a new journey into fulfillment, a journey that includes both personal growth and meaningful intimate relationships.

The divorce rate increased dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s, with the peak coming from 1979 to 1981. Since 1981 the rate of divorce has tended to decline. The grounds for divorce are set by the states, all of which now have no-fault laws.

The process of uncoupling is marked by four time periods: recognition, discussion, action, and postdissolution. In the recognition period, one partner senses that the relationship is deteriorating but may not openly confront the other. In the discussion period, the marital problems may be shared with outsiders as well as the spouse. The history of the relationship may be redefined in terms of a series of negative experiences. The initiator is making the transition to a new life. The action period involves legal steps to formally dissolve the marriage. This is a difficult period, involving the struggle over such things as division of property, child custody, and ambivalent feelings. The postdissolution period begins when both spouses accept the fact that the marriage is over.

Bohannan has identified six experiences that people are likely to have in divorce. Divorce involves an emotional, legal, community, and psychic separation and an economic and co-parental (for those with children) settlement.

Divorce is more likely for those of lower socioeconomic status, those married at a younger or later age, African Americans, and those who lack membership in an integrated group, such as a religious group. Changed laws and attitudes and the changing roles of women are associated with higher divorce rates. At an interpersonal level, divorce is associated with various complaints, such as infidelity and conflict over personalities and finances. Some divorces are the result of changed feelings about the partner, and some result from a spouse’s emotional problems.

Divorce can have positive as well as negative outcomes. For some, a divorce is a positive turning point in personal well-being. But numerous negative outcomes are likely, including short-term and in some cases long-term health problems and, particularly for women, financial problems. Divorce doesn’t necessarily end interaction between the spouses, though the quality of the interaction varies considerably.

Divorce has both short-term and long-term effects on children. In the short run, children are likely to suffer various physical, behavioral, and emotional problems. Over the long run, there may be positive outcomes for children, especially if the home was marked by intense and continual conflict. In some ways, children from disrupted homes are no different from those from intact homes in the long run. But there also can be some long-term negative consequences, including lower levels of educational and occupational achievement, problematic relationships with the noncustodial parent, problems with trust, and depression.

Some researchers believe that girls adjust more easily than boys to the divorce of parents. But both girls and boys suffer adverse effects, though not always in precisely the same way or to the same degree.

Child custody arrangements can be painful for both parents and children. Sole custody is giving way to joint custody in many states. The type of custody can affect the child’s adjustment to the divorce. Some evidence exists that joint custody, while not solving all the problems, does have benefits for both the children and the parents. Children’s adjustment to the divorce depends in part on the behavior of the parents. If the divorce reduces conflict significantly, children adjust better. The parents will adjust better to the extent that they work through their feelings and are able to define the divorce as an opportunity to grow.

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Divorce has become a commonplace experience in U.S. society. This is, in part, an outcome of the supremacy of individual values and choices over governmental regulation, social roles, and social norms. Economic factors, however, as well as issues related to social status are as important to the issue of divorce as is personal choice. Whatever the factors involved, though, divorce is a painful process, as illustrated by the massive number of Internet sites set up to help those thinking about, going through, or trying to recover from a divorce.

Two useful sites are:

• Divorce Magazine

  • https://www.divorcemag.com

  • This site offers subscription to the magazine but also has news, advice, statistics, and articles from past issues of the magazine that you can freely access.

• Divorce Net

  • https://www.divorcenet.com

  • This is also a comprehensive website, including legal aspects of divorce in each of the states and links to resources concerning all aspects of divorce.

Using these two sites, enlarge your understanding with the following projects:

1. At the Divorce Magazine site, find articles on divorce recovery. Using material from the articles and the text, make a presentation to the class titled “Ten tips on how to recover from a divorce.”

2. Go to the Divorce Net site and peruse the legal aspects of divorce (such as custody, child support, debt, property division, etc.) in the state where you live. Do the same for two other states—one with roughly the same population as yours and another that is much smaller or larger. What are the similarities and differences? Does size or region of the states seem to make any difference? Evaluate the laws in the three states in terms—as you see it—of fairness and helpfulness to those divorcing.

Design Elements: Flower: McGraw Hill; Silhouette of Head: Fine Art/Shutterstock; On the Web Box: McGraw Hill

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