How can it be that divorce rates are higher for women than they are for men? Unless Gay marriages are being included in this study, it just doesn’t jive. Maybe we need the Straight Dope on Cecil’s answer.
jus checkin
Women could get remarried more often.
Well, divorce rates could very well be higher for women than for men in a particular age group because married couples are not always the same age.
Also related to this column, if not to your question: it’s worth mentioning that * number of marriages that end in divorce* and the number of people who get divorced (at least once in their lives) are not necessarily the same thing. For example, if 90 percent of the population married for life, and the other 10 percent married, divorced, remarried, and redivorced repeatedly, it could easily be the case that half or more of all marriages end in divorce.
I take issue with the idea that rising single motherhood represents “bad news”. How do you define “single motherhood”? A family where there is no father? Then I guess lesbian couples are single mothers. Where the mother is not married? In that case, “single mothers” includes women who are raising children in non-traditional relationships, such as co-parenting with someone who isn’t a sexual partner, or who they have no intention of marrying.
Single motherhood was low in the 40’s because of the social stigma of premarital sex, and the small likelihood of women being well-educated and able to generate the kind of income it takes to raise a child alone.
I am grateful that today there are more opportunities for women to make whatever life for themselves they wish, including the freedom to choose motherhood while single.
“Bad news.” Piff.
The figure quoted for unwed mothers in Iceland is bogus, because in probably over ninety percent of those cases the father of the child is living with the mother and supporting his family. In Europe, shotgun weddings are very rare, perhaps due to strict gun control laws. Often a couple may marry some years after the child(ren) are born, or just continue living together as mother and father without the bonds of official marriage. In contrast, most American unwed mothers may not even know WHO the father is and will never see him again.
To the OP:
Women can have a higher divorce rate, because the stat they have on there is how many people have been divorced (once, twice, or eleven times).
If I married and divorced three women, I’m one guy with three divorces - I’m one divorced guy. There are three divorced women.
Bup,
The way you put it makes sense. Thanks.
You of course have a cite for this, right? Going by the unwed mothers I know, it’s complete and utter crap. You want to spout anti-US propaganda, go to the pit.
In the 40s and 50s, unmarried mothers were uncommon. However, teen-aged brides was much higher. The percentages tend to level out, if you compare unmarried moms today to the number of girls married under the age of 18 in the 40s and 50s. Being tied down by a child is quite bad enough. The options girls had in the 40s and 50s were far fewer, and being trapped in a marriage isn’t necessarily an improvement.
Moreover, there are a lot of people whose lives (and the lives of their children) are vastly improved by a well-placed divorce or two. None of the numbers that measure the damage to the families by divorce take into sufficient account things such as race and class, and there simply aren’t useful ways to guess at whether the problems happened before or after the divorce. If you’ve got a kid whose parents divorced at the age of 12 because dad was beating the holy hell out of mom and the kid, the kid’ll show up in the statistics as someone who experienced exceptional difficulty in school after the divorce. However, the abuse is more likely to have been the root cause of this, and not the divorce. All these wonderful statistics fail to deal with the fact that people’s lives are very complicated and that a single snapshot taken of a complex system such as a family will not tell you very much about the dynamics involved.
News Alert : Jerry Springer is not an accurate representation of American unwed mothers.
Kung Fu Lola, Most kids want to have a daddy and want to know who he is. No, I am not going to look for “official” facts to back this up . It something I have noticed often in my 52 years.
I wonder what percentage of married couples without children never had children vs. those whose children have left? With longer life expectancies and fewer children on average one would think this case would be more common.
That’s not a bad thing, considering the alternative is the kids moving back.
This is one of the funniest things I’ve read all week. I either applaud your comedic abilities or think you’ve seen too many Georgia Satellites videos.
So what other conclusions can we make? That the percentage of dates paying Dutch has risen due to an influx of immigrants from Holland?
If you can’t give facts to back up a statement, you’ll be eaten alive by this board. The posters here are discerning, intelligent people who are committed to “fighting ignorance”, and they don’t have much respect for people who make statements like that with nothing to back them up.
Read my post again and you’ll see that I mentioned children being raised by two women, or unmarried women who were co-parenting with someone else. Not women who had no idea who the father of their child was. THAT can of worms was opened by a whole 'nother poster.
BTW, throwing your age around doesn’t give you cred. You can live 100 years and still be dumb as a sack of hammers. All it takes is ignorance.
Ok, this is the first time I have ever posted on a message board, so I’m sorry if I cock it up!
Most of the people I know (yes, this is just anecdotal) that have been divorced have had multiple marriages. Does anyone know how people like this impact the divorce stats? Is it really a smaller group of people getting these divorces while most people stay together?
I hope that made sense.
I would like to know where Harris came up with his 1/8 figure. From the data in that quote, 50% seems like a reasonable estimate, although it involves making some assumptions that may be false. The 2% per year figure falls naturally out of the data, but there is no explanation given for the 1/8 number.
Actually, there was a news report only today that children of single parents are substantially more likely (3-4 times more likely) to become drug addicts.
I was also wondering, How do widows and widowers fit into these sats since we are talking about single mothers. Take for example my mother. My father died when I was 16, therefore, my mother would not show up on the divorce column. but would under single mother.
It seems to me that these are the types of situations that are normally omitted from a 2000 word news article, and only serve to bias the facts for one political figgure or another. I would venture to guess that very few all inclusive studies exist that cover all the effect for and from divorce/single parentage. Factors such as premature death, spousal abuse, drug/alcohol abuse, as well as capricious marragie in the first place all contribute.
As any one knows, satictics can be used to prove anything, if you slice it right and only ask the questions you want to hear. Reality rarely conforms to that “mold”. And I tell you this as a product of a “single mother”.
Presumably, these kind of stats only mean something in a country like the US where monagamy is assumed to be desirous (parts of Utah aside). Places like Saudi Arabia, where men may have many many wives, have differing assumptions and ‘divorce’ doesn’t mean quite the same thing.
Monkey: The stat I remember (and not mentioned in the article) is that close to 20% of all marriages last at least 50 years, until one or both partners death. I don’t recall if the stat includes widow/ers whose marriage hasn’t lasted that long, but I don’t think so. In any case, given the differences in life expectancy, there are probably more unmarried women than men simply because more women outlive their mates than the other way around.
PS: Hi Lydy!
I’m having a hard time reconciling the word “freedom” with the concept of raising a child by yourself.
For the record, I think kids are likely to do better with one good parent than two parents - one or both of whom are really bad at parenting.