Divorce and Remarriage Education

Rising divorce rates have made it necessary to devise ways of helping the millions of persons involved in marital and family disruption. Although there is a lag between the needs and the attempts to meet them, some progress is being made. This paper describes the Adjustment to Divorce and Problems of a Second Marriage informational-educational series for adults. The newer series, Problems of a Second Marriage, also includes widows and some individuals who are being married for the first time to a previously married person.     

Attitudes Toward Inheritance Following Divorce and Remarriage

The purpose of this study is to examine attitudes regarding who should be included in wills following divorce and remarriage. Respondents were 268 men and 439 women. In mailed vignettes, they indicated whom they thought should be included in an elder's will. Three variables were examined: (a) family closeness, (b) contact after divorce, and (c) remarriage. Three factors were associated with inheritance obligations: (a) genetic ties, (b) patriarchal lineage, and (c) family ties, which were defined more broadly than genetic relationships. Few respondents mentioned factors such as family closeness and reciprocity. There was little agreement regarding who is and who is not in the family, but inheritance clearly was limited to family. Obligation to include the next of kin in the will supersedes obligations based upon closeness and frequency of contact.     

China's Divorce and Remarriage Rates: Trends and Regional Disparities

China's rapid economic growth and significant increase in divorce and remarriage rates since the early 1980s provide an excellent case for studying the divorce and remarriage patterns in economic transition. Following extremely low divorce and remarriage rates in the 1960s and 1970s, China's crude divorce rate increased from 0.33 in 1979 to 1.59 in 2007, and the percentage of remarriages among the people who married each year increased from 3.05% in 1985 to 10.24% in 2007. Our graphical and econometric analyses based on the most recently available data suggest that the variations in divorce rate and remarriage rate across regions and over time were associated with regional factors, per-capita income, and education level. Also, there was a positive trend in both divorce and remarriage rates across all regions in China over the study period.     

Financial Responsibilities Toward Older Parents and Stepparents Following Divorce and Remarriage

We assessed beliefs about adult children’s responsibilities to financially assist parents and stepparents following later-life divorce and remarriage using a multiple-segment factorial vignette with a national sample (N = 1,121). Ordered logistic regression analyses indicated that beliefs about financial responsibilities to older adults declined after marital transitions, and responsibilities to assist stepparents were more tenuous than to parents. Beliefs about intergenerational responsibilities were affected by adult children’s financial resources and by changes in older adults’ marital statuses. Kinship obligation norms, the adult children’s financial resources, and reciprocity norms were the most common reasons used to explain beliefs about responsibilities to financially assist older parents and stepparents, but these reasons became less salient following divorce and remarriage of the older adult. After marital transitions, beliefs about intergenerational financial responsibilities were more often based on the older adult’s culpability for being in a position of need, relationship quality, and diminished kinship obligations.     

Divorce and Remarriage in Norway: A Prospective Cohort Study Between 1981 and 2013

ABSTRACT

As the population of divorced adults has increased, the number of remarriages has followed. Previous research has mainly compared first-time marriages with remarriages, whereas this study analyzes 4 different constellations of marriages: first time for both spouses, first time for one and second time for the other, second time for both, and third time or more for at least one member of the couple. The analyses are based on data from all Norwegian 2-sex marriages formed from 1981 to 2013, for a total of more than 770,000 marriages. The findings indicate that remarried couples are considerably more prone to divorce compared to couples married for the first time, particularly marriages in which both partners are remarried and marriages in which at least one of the partners is married for the third time or more. The differences between the various groups of marriages decline with a longer duration of the marriage.     

Remarriage,Unmarried Cohabitation,Living Apart Together: Partner Relationships Following Bereavement or Divorce

Substantial proportions of people enter into new partner relationships after bereavement or divorce. Nowadays in Europe, unmarried cohabitation and living‐apart‐together relationships are frequently opted for at repartnering. Drawing on the Netherlands’ Living Arrangements and Social Networks survey of men and women aged 55 to 89 years (N = 4,494), this article explicates the determinants that lead widowed or divorced people to enter into old and new types of partner relationships. Cox proportional hazard regression analyses revealed that age at most recent union dissolution, the number of partner dissolutions, working during and after the most recent union dissolution, and other demographic variables are important in weighing the pros and cons of different types of living arrangements.     

The Impact of Marital Quality,Divorce, and Remarriage on the Relationships Between Parents and Their Children

SUMMARY

This paper examines data from a panel study on the long-term effects of parental marital quality and divorce on relationships between parents and adult children. Attention is focused on whether these effects vary by age and gender of child as well as the theoretical explanations linking mother-father and parent-child relations. The relational quality between adult children (18-31 years old) and both mothers and fathers is examined from the perspective of both children and parents. Among intact families, parental marital quality has long-term effects on father-child relations, regardless of gender, whereas short-term effects are characteristic of mother-child relations and only perceived by mothers. Further, although divorce without remarriage hurts sons' relationships with both fathers and mothers, it hurts father-daughter relations even more. Mother-daughter bonds appear to be improved by divorce, with declines in income explaining a large portion of the tendency for divorce to affect father-child relations.     

Redivorce Following Remarriage

This paper examines the use of the often quoted remarriage studies done in the 50s by Monahan. It was found that extreme caution should be used in presentations where the redivorce rate is discussed. The current statistics certainly do not paint the bleak picture presented by Monahan. Surprisingly, when 28 current family texts were sampled for their treatment of remarriage, it was found that most do not even address the topic, and of those who do, most present the older and misleading Monahan data. It is suggested in the paper that researchers, educators, and counselors need an accurate view of the risk of remarriage following divorce, since most of those who divorce do remarry. Also, the suggestion was made that the traditional family form may not be in as much of a decline as some report. Most people stay married; of those who divorce, most (68%) have either one child or none, and most remarry.     

The Remarriage Market

Using data from the 1970 National Fertility Survey, this study examines the influence of factors associated with the remarriage market on two outcome areas: 1) the probability of remarriage and the interval between marital events; and 2) the selectivity of spouse characteristics. The analysis finds that women who had children, who were highly educated, and who separated at older ages had markedly lower probabilities of remarriage and longer intervals; however, only weak support for the expectation that the above factors would alter the selectivity process for women who do remarry is found. The findings are consistent with a remamage market perspective, however the analysis also indicates that factors other than those considered here may play a more important role in influencing the remarriage process.     

Problems in Remarriage

This study explored the problems in remarriages which remained intact and those which ended in divorce to determine differences in the seriousness of problems with step/children and whether the redivorced reported greater disagreement on key issues. The effects of gender and family structure on marital consensus were explored also. Using a matched sample of 26 remarried and redivorced individuals, the findings indicated that those redivorced did not report problems with step/children to be more serious. They did report a significantly greater frequency of disagreement with spouses on matters involving money, parenting of step/children, spousal and outsider relations, household expectations, and miscellaneous issues. It also was found that gender and remarried family type did not significantly affect consensus except for "outsider" relations; remarriages with children born only to the current marriage reported greater disagreement than either simple or complex stepfamilies.     

Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution

Cherlin (1978) argued that remarriages are less successful than first marriages because remarriage is an incomplete institution. Cherlin's views have been very influential in the 1990s. These views have been incorporated into over 20 recent works on marriage and the family, they have been incorporated into three therapeutic programs for remarriages, and they are frequently cited in marriage and the family textbooks. This paper demonstrates that there is no sound empirical basis for the acceptance of Cherlin's influential views. Specifically, it demonstrates that there is no convincing empirical evidence that: (a) remarriages are less successful than first marriages, (b) remarriage is an incomplete institution, or (c) incompletely institutionalized family roles are a source of problems in remarriages. This paper also discusses the most important implications of the lack of empirical support for Cherlin's views and offers suggestions for future research.     

Attitudes About Remarriage in Malta

This study investigated the attitudes about remarriage of married and previously married Maltese people. Respondents were selected using stratified random sampling; 810 men and 1,196 women answered a questionnaire by means of computer-assisted telephone interviewing. The majority (67.4%) of respondents did not consider remarriage. Remarriage was more likely to be considered by respondents who were younger, previously married, nonparents, had children who were not all born within marriage, and were of higher socioeconomic status. The study highlights the differences in attitude according to gender and marital status. The fact that pro-remarriage attitudes were endorsed by 32.6% of respondents and that these were more likely to come from nontraditional family forms suggests that family life in Malta is no longer dictated by normative social imperatives. The need for the legal protection of families headed by cohabiting partners is highlighted.     

Loneliness and Divorce

Loneliness was found to be associated with divorce. Women were more affected than men. The greatest feelings of loneliness were in social situations when women felt they had no one with whom to share responsibility; when women felt that finances were a limiting factor; and when women had certain tasks to perform and felt there was no one with whom to share the responsibility. Both men and women were lonely when they felt out of place at a particular time or event.     

Divorce

Intervention techniques for helping children of divorce have generally been implemented after the formal announcement of the disruption of the family. However, children are aware during the preseparation phase of the imminent crisis. A play, written by a third-grade boy, is presented here, to dispel the notion that children are oblivious to the marital disharmony, and to encourage all professionals who work with couples in the early phases of separation to deal immediately with its impact on the children.     

Attachment and Divorce

In this paper, recent efforts to integrate attachment theory and family systems theory are reviewed and extended to the context of therapy with families coping with the divorce process. Family members' global working models of attachment, rather than the spousal attachment alone, are proposed as the point of intervention, with the goal of helping families reestablish an "attachment equilibrium" during and after divorce, thus addressing potentially problematic expressions of attachment behavior that could interfere with resolution of the divorce, causing difficulties in future co-parenting and other family functioning.     

Divorce and Children

Zang Xiaoping (editor of the Literary Gazette) Whether or not to get divorced for the sake of the children is an important question for every couple that is having problems. I think the key to solving the problem is to start by considering what would be best for the healthy development of their children.     

The Role of Cohabitation in Remarriage

Using 3 subsamples of remarried respondents (n =1,583, 971, and 926) in the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study investigates how different types of cohabitation, especially postdivorce cohabitation, affect the timing and quality of remarriage in the United States. Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis indicates that postdivorce cohabitation in general and postdivorce cohabitation with multiple partners in particular delay remarriage. Furthermore, echoing previous research findings on the relationship between premarital cohabitation and relationship quality, the ordered logistic analysis shows that postdivorce cohabitation with a spouse is associated with lower levels of remarital happiness, and postdivorce cohabitation of all types tends to be associated with higher levels of remarital instability. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Timing of Remarriage Among Divorced and Widowed Parents

Research on timing of parental remarriage is important to understanding consequences of remarriage for children. In this study, survival analyses were conducted predicting timing of parental remarriage from parental loss in a sample of 3,774 offspring whose parents divorced or whose mother or father died during childhood. Transition to remarriage was quicker for parents who divorced compared to those who were widowed, especially for fathers. By examining timing of remarriage from the perspective of parents, and thus children, we identify not only who is more likely to experience parental remarriage, but when remarriage is likely to occur.     

Remarriage Between Divorced People with Children from Previous Marriages: A Proposal for Preparation for Remarriage*

This paper discusses the special attributes of the legally reconstituted families formed when divorced persons who have children from their previous marriages remarry. The remarriage family is identified as a high risk group for which society has not as yet established norms. Interviews with 70 couples suggest that the stress for couples and families involved in divorce and remarriage would be prevented or reduced through remarriage preparation courses.