15.3: What Predicts Divorce in the U.S.?

Years of research on divorce has yielded a few common themes of what puts a couple at more or less risk of divorce. Everyone is at risk of divorcing, but the presence of divorce risks does not determine the certain outcome of divorce for everyone. There is a geography factor of U.S. divorce. Divorce rates tend to be lower in the North East and Higher in the West. Nevada typically has the highest of all state divorce rates, but is often excluded from comparison because of the "Vegas marriage" or "Vegas divorce" effect.

Simply enduring the difficult times of marriage is associated with remaining married. Most of the factors that contribute to divorce lie to a great extent within the realm of influence and choice had by the individual. For example, waiting until at least your \(20^{\text {th }}\) birthday to marry lowers divorce risks tremendously. In fact the best ages to marry are 25-29 (interestingly, the U.S. median age at marriage for men and women falls within this age group). Being younger than 19 years old at your first marriage is extremely risky. Why?

Basically the explanation is that most younger couples are disadvantaged economically, socially, and emotionally, and their circumstances have accompanying hardships that would not be present had they waited to age 25 (for example, had they graduated college first and prepared themselves for the labor force and for the emotional complexity of marriage). Many scientific studies indicate that there is a refining process of social and intellectual capacities that is not reached until around age 26 and those who marry young exchange their prime years of selfdiscovery for marriage. Another major individual choice-related factor is marrying because of an unplanned pregnancy. Most babies born in the U.S. are born to a married couple. But, today about \(40 \%\) are born to single mothers of all ages. Even though many of these single mothers marry the baby's father, numerous studies have indicated that they have a higher likelihood of their marriage ending in divorce.

Many individuals struggle to completely surrender their single status. They mentally remain on the marriage market in case "someone better than their current spouse comes along." Norval Glenn argued that many individuals see marriage as a temporary state while they keep an eye open for someone better. "More honest vows would often be "as long as we both shall love" or "as long as no one better comes along." Glenn gets at the core of the cultural values associated with risks of divorcing. \({ }^4\) These values have changed over time. As more people wanted to divorce, divorce laws became more lax and as the laws loosened, more people were able to divorce.

Robert and Jeanette Lauer are a husband-wife team who studied commitment and endurance of married couples. They identified 29 factors among couples who had been together for 15 years or more. They found that both husbands and wives reported as their number one and two factors that their spouse was their best friend and that they liked their spouse as a person. \({ }^5\) The Lauers also studied the levels of commitment couples had to their marriage. The couples reported that they were in fact committed to and supportive of, not only their own marriage, but marriage as an institution. Irreconcilable differences are common to marriage, and the basic strategy to deal with them is to negotiate as much as is possible, accept the irresolvable differences, and finally live happily with them.

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Footnotes

4. Lauer, R. (1986). ‘Til death do us part: How couples stay together; Google Lauer and Lauer and Kerr various years

5. http://marriage.eharmony.com/