I was wondering if anyone happened to know if there had been studies done on the correlation between divorce rates and women’s rights/lib (measured by rates of women in the workforce, perhaps?). It seems, at least to me, that as it became more and more accepted that women could exist outside the home that divorce rates started to rise as well.
I’ve often wondered (to the criticism of my wife calling me a male chavinist pig) if women’s rights and their increase in the workplace has contributed also to a higer cost of living for families.
It seems in days past a middle class family could exsist on the father working, the mother staying home, and 3-4 children supported.
Nowdays for a middle class family to exist and have 2-3 children both parents need to work.
I think they’re correlated in terms of time period. According to this graph, there was a dramatic increase in divorce rates between 1960 and 1980, which was a period of time that saw a lot more women entering the workforce, and a lot of social changes relating to the role of women. Of course, there were a lot of other changes happening in the U.S. during this time, so it’s hard to draw simple conclusions about cause and effect.
Even if there’s a causal relationship between women’s rights and divorce, it’s still debatable whether this is a problem. Some social conservatives seem to take the view that “women’s lib” came along and corrupted formerly-happy women and made them want to get divorced. I think it’s much more likely that the social changes of the 60’s and 70’s gave unhappily-married women more options, thus lessening the pressure to stay in an unhappy marriage.
Isn’t that because mortgage companies started expecting both partners to be working and continue working and lent mortgages accordingly?
Sorry, I can’t cite any studies, but there is absolutely a level of correlation between women being able to have an identity apart from marriage and family and increased levels of divorce. To give only one example, the modern femininist movement got its start in part from Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique, the theme of which was a questionairre that she sent out to women in her graduating class. Overwhelmingly, they expressed discontent on being dependent on their husbands for their livelihood and for their identity.
I certainly don’t think it’s a problem. I had almost added a paragraph about how there may then be a discussion to be had about if the “decline in moral fiber/family values” that some conservatives blame the increasing divorce rates on actually exist, or if the feelings that are now leading to divorce have always existed, but the option to act on them was simply not available (If so, how is this “family values”?).
Also remember that the standard of living for the “middle class” has gone up significantly. The average house has ballooned to twice it’s size and we expect things like separate bedrooms for each kid. We take our vacations to Europe instead of the nearest campground. We expect to have every single gadget and sometimes multiples- there was a time when having on kitchen gadget was luxury. Now we have so many they will barely fit in our enormous kitchens and we want TVs in each room.
Also remember that divorce was harder to get – both by law or due to social pressure – prior to 1960. In New York, for instance, the only grounds for divorce prior to 1966 was adultery.
As others have pointed out, that’s a crock. If you insist on incorporating every expensive innovation into your life, maybe. But think about how we lived back in the 60’s: a single $15/month telephone land line served a family, we didn’t have airbags or computers (or even seatbelts) in our Ford Falcons, coffee came in huge tin cans, there was no such thing as $150 designer jeans, and going out to eat was a very occasional luxury.
Current housing costs are being corrected as we speak.
Divorce IS a women’s rights issue. It’s possibly the most fundamental women’s right. All the others follow from the basic idea that a woman shouldn’t have to irrevocably trade her freedom for the sake of support.
This makes absolutely no sense from any angle. “Mortgage companies” AKA “banks” now lend money at interest, just like they did in the 1990s, in the 1980s, in the 1970s, in the 1960s, and a few decades before. Interest rates have fluctuated up and down, and this affects how much the banks pay to their depositors and how much they charge their borrowers. So how is that the bank “expecting both partners to work” makes any difference. The bank only lends them money. They are the ones who choose the house they want to live in and people now choose to live in houses much larger than they did decades ago. And to have more than one car. Not to mention internet and countless electronic gadgets. Not to mention replacing the car and gadgets way often. Why exactly is the bank at fault? If people assume too much debt they have no one to blame but themselves.
I think that’s The Feminine Mystique.
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but I do disagree that it is the most fundamental women’s right. In my view, the fundamental right is that there exist equal status before and under the law for women and men. From this, in a democracy will come equality on a number of fronts.
As I recall (from transcribing some suffragette books for Distributed Proofreading), one of the arguments against allowing women to vote was that it would lead to an increase in them getting divorced from their husbands.
Doesn’t seem to have been true.
:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
Look at the chart that’s linked to in TJVM’s post. Notice what the trend is there. Divorce rates rise quickly from 1958 to 1981 and then slowly drop from 1981 to the present. So that’s a period of about 23 years that divorce rates were rising and a period (so far) of 27 years that divorce rates have been falling. There are several things that we should say about this. First, it’s not true that divorce rates have been consistently rising. They rose slowly from approximately the turn of the century to the 1940’s. They dropped slowly in the 1950’s. There was one period of about 23 years, from 1958 to 1981, that divorce rates took a big jump. Since then, divorce rates have dropped slowly.
So you want to argue that divorce rates are tied strictly to women’s rights, you would have to claim that women’s rights increased from around the turn of the century to the 1940’s, decreased during the 1950’s, dramatically increased from 1958 to 1981, and have decreased since then. Surely it’s more complicated than that. This all sounds to me like post hoc propter hoc reasoning. Women’s rights may have had something to do with divorce rates, but they’re not the only thing affecting them. Also, the causation may go the opposite way. Perhaps the large number of divorced women caused agitation for women’s rights, so it was the divorce rate that drove the increase in women’s rights, not the other way around. It may also be that both the women’s rights movement and the increase in divorce rates were caused by some other factor.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. Mortgage companies used to lend on a basis of 3x the senior partner and 1x the junior, thinking that one of the two would be engaged in childcare at some point. Then it became 3x both partners. The average wage is approx. £25K, and the average house price is approx. £150K (or 6x average salary).
Indeed it was spurred on by the Tories ending double income tax relief.
sailor said:
No, banks also determine how much they are willing to lend any particular party. Interest rates play a role in that, but primarily the first thing considered is how much money you make and how much debt you are carrying, i.e. where is your money going. There is a formula that takes those things into account, and there are industry standards.
So the total amount the bank is willing to lend you may be based upon your single salary, or the combined salary. If both people work, then it is based upon both incomes.
As has been mentioned, we expect to have much more in the way of material goods these days (my husband and I have 2 large and one VERY large TVs, for just the two of us, and he wants another one). Also, in days past, the woman did a LOT of work that benefitted the family, but it was not counted as production…things like sewing, gardening, lots of home cooking and preserving, and acting as the man’s aide in things like getting dry cleaning done. So the woman worked, she just wasn’t paid a wage or salary for it.
IMHO this thread cuts to the heart of so many issues plaguing society including increased materialism, abortion, unloved/neglected/abused children, increased disorders in children such as ADHD, broken families, sexual promiscuity, lower sperm counts, fertility issues, even increased castration of pets, which I think would also show a correlation to the women’s rights movement.
It is a attempt to live your life in a way outside the plan of God for humanity, as we suffer as a society. It is depending on and living for self, instead of God. I believe this is a core issue, as the family is at the heart of the plan for humanity. God established a divine order, the spiritual relationship between Christ and His Church is to be copied physically between husband and wife.
This goes back to Eden where Eve sought immediate gratification for resources, wisdom, beauty that the serpent offered at the cost of leaving God’s path for humanity (not the the serpent mentioned this part), but we still bear that cost to this day.