The Late-Life Divorced

This study on divorce and the elderly includes a secondary analysis of data taken from Current Population Reports (CPR) and from The National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH). Age specific divorce prevalence rates calculated using the CPR, suggests an increase in the proportion of elderly divorced persons over the last 15 years, with the proportion of divorced women being greater than that of divorced men. Findings from the analysis of NSFH data suggests that women were more likely to turn to others for emotional support during separation than were men. Older women were more likely to than older men, The younger were more likely to than the older. Older women had better adjustment scores and overall happiness than did older men.     

Should It Be Easy? Divorce Process Attitudes Among Those Who Have Split Up in Midlife

This grounded theory analysis examines the gray divorced population’s attitudes about the divorce process, that is, whether those who have experienced a divorce at age 50 or older believe divorce should be easier or harder to obtain in U.S. society. Among the 40 men and 40 women interviewed in this analysis, there were divorce delayers, who wanted to make divorce laws stricter; divorce facilitators, who championed more flexible divorce laws; divorce ambivalents, who held mixed views; and marriage gatekeepers, who advocated on behalf of status quo divorce laws but tougher relationship-strengthening requirements before marriage. The diversity of these participants’ views reflects those voices in the general population who continue to see divorce as a complex decision for most couples.     

Changes in Wives' Income: Effects on Marital Happiness,Psychological Well‐Being,and the Risk of Divorce

We investigate the effects of increases in married women's actual income and in their proportion of total family income on marital happiness, psychological well‐being, and the likelihood of divorce. We use data from a sample of 1,047 married individuals (not couples) in medium‐duration marriages, drawn from a five‐wave panel survey begun in 1980 and continuing to 1997. Structural equation modeling is used to assess the impact of increases in married women's absolute and relative income from 1980 to 1988 on the marital happiness and well‐being of married men and women in 1988. Event history analysis is used to determine how these changes affect the risk of divorce between 1988 and 1997. We find that increases in married women's absolute and relative income significantly increase their marital happiness and well‐being. Increases in married women's absolute income generally have nonsignificant effects for married men. However, married men's well‐being is significantly lower when married women's proportional contributions to the total family income are increased. The likelihood of divorce is not significantly affected by increases in married women's income. Nevertheless, increases in married women's income may indirectly lower the risk of divorce by increasing women's marital happiness.     

Seeking Justice: The Strategy of the National Social Action Program

Past efforts at law reform have taken years of consciousness raising. The resulting legislation has been ineffective in reducing men’s sexual violence against women and children, in large part because most women are understandably reluctant to go to court. This reluctance comesfrom recognition of the fundamental failures of the legal doctrine. The judicial response to men’s sexual violence can be reformed through the use of existing procedures (e.g., prosecution objections and appeals). This paper describes 3 local actions to start a fast and effective reform of the legal doctrine: Documenting the Outrageous, Challenging the Legal System, and Supporting Victims.     

Marital Lifestyles and Adjustment to Separation

Two hundred and ninety-eight men and women in the process of divorce were interviewed concerning their lifestyle prior to maeta1 separation and their current state of happiness. Sex differences in social independence, division of household chores, and reliance on spouse were congruent with traditional sex role norms. When lifestyle measures were correlated with present happiness, less traditional behaviors were generally associated with greater happiness, as was the maintenance of separate interests, hobbies, and social activities.     

Noncustodial Fathers Following Divorce

Noncustodial fathers are men whose parental rights and obligations have been altered through judicial action, usually accompanying marital separation and divorce. In the majority of divorces, physical and legal custody of children is taken from fathers and reassigned to mothers only. Despite the curtailment of their decision-making authority and despite the limitations imposed on their day-to-day presence in their children’s lives, in the majority of divorces fathers retain the duty to provide economic support for their minor children. The bulk of quantitative research on the post-divorce involvement of men as noncustodial fathers is structured by explora- tion of the interrelationships among these parameters: child custody awards, visitation privileges and performance, child support awards and compliance, and child well-being. The documentation of important linkages between child support compliance and child outcome have focused both social science and legislative attention on means to foster greater paternal acceptance of responsibility for children. Research using open-ended interviews and smaller surveys of limited samples have been of great importance in providing a richer understanding of the noncustodial father-child relationship. To retain(or for some, to build for the first time) a meaningful paternal relationship, men are challenged to find new ways to confront issues of autonomy, connectedness and power. However, societal supports for moving beyond the traditional polarization of genders and roles through which families have been organized are sorely lacking. The ways in which men respond to the changes precipitated by divorce are influenced by a number of factors related to their own self-definition as well as to the broader social context in which they operate. In order to design psychoeducational or therapeutic interventions that allow noncustodial fathers to adapt in ways that are beneficial to themselves and ultimately to their children, an awareness of these factors is imperative.     

’Til Divorce Do Us Part: Marriage Dissolution in Later Life

Late-life divorce—commonly referred to as gray divorce—is a rising trend that parallels the growth of the older adult population. We sought to gain an in-depth understanding of the experience of marriage dissolution, the divorce process, and life following divorce in a sample of older adults who divorced after more than 20 years of marriage. Qualitative data were collected from 10 divorcees (7 women and 3 men; M age = 63.5) and analyzed to understand the gray divorce experience; that is, factors that determined or delayed the decision to divorce and divorcees’ coping during and after divorce. Participants’ stories demonstrate that marriages endure despite problems because relationships are complex, and good experiences mix with bad ones. Outcomes of late-life divorce have significant health and financial implications for both individuals and society.     

Mid- and Late-Life Divorce and Parents’ Perceptions of Emerging Adult Children’s Emotional Reactions

A paucity of research exists pertaining to the experiences of emerging adult children in the context of parental divorce. This study uses Paul R. Amato’s divorce-stress-adjustment framework to organize a set of predictors that potentially influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s emotional reactions to a divorce. Data come from a nationally representative AARP study, from which we analyzed a sample of 283 parents who experienced a divorce at age 40 years or older. Results indicate that parental gender, nature of contact with the ex-partner, divorce timing, time spent contemplating divorce, a history of parental divorce, and the reason for divorce influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s reaction to the divorce. Implications, limitations, and future direction for research are discussed.     

Marriage and the economic status of women with children

Marriage is positively correlated with income, and women with children are much less likely to be in poverty if they are married. Selection into marriage makes it difficult to assess whether these correlations represent a causal effect of marriage. One instrument for marriage proposed in past research is the gender of a woman’s first child. We find that women who have a boy first are about 0.33 percentage points more likely to be married at any point in time. This effect operates through both increasing the probability that unmarried mothers marry the child’s father and reducing the probability of divorce. We also find that women whose first child is a boy experience higher levels of family income and are less likely to receive welfare income, be below the poverty line, and receive food stamps. Estimates using child gender as an instrumental variable for marriage suggest that marriage plays a large causal role in improving the economic well-being of women with children and that these effects are largest among women at the lower end of the income distribution.     

A Longitudinal Study of the Long-Term Predictors of China’s Divorce Rate

Abstract

Based on data from the China Statistical Yearbook from 1996 to 2013, this study explores the long-term predictors of China’s divorce rate over recent decades with the longitudinal models incorporating the repeated measure models and long-term change models. The research findings suggest that among the factors researched, the economic development and the time factor are the two most essential predicators explaining the long-term variations in China’ divorce rate from 1996 to 2013. This result provides additional empirical evidence from China as a transitional economy to support the widely accepted assumption that the divorce rate rises with the advance of modernization. On the contrary, the positive effect of women’s empowerment disappeared with the presence of economic development, indicating that over a long period of time, the two factors do not work at the same time, and the economic development may affect the divorce rate independent of the influence of women’s empowerment. It can be implied that despite calls for the revival of Chinese tradition and culture under Xi Jinping’s rule since 2012, China’s divorce rate is expected to continue to rise with further economic development.     

Economic Circumstances and Family Outcomes: A Review of the 1990s

This review documents the economic context within which American families lived in the 1990s. Despite nearly full employment and growing income and wealth for many Americans, problem areas included persistent racial gaps in economic well‐being, growing inequality, and declining wages for young men. Women showed stronger income growth than men in the decade, and 2‐earner households became increasingly associated with advantage. We review the consequences of these trends and of economic well‐being generally on 4 dimensions of family outcomes: family formation, divorce, marital quality, and child well‐being. Despite hypotheses suggesting that women's earnings might have different effects on family outcomes than men's earnings, generally the review supports the expectation that both men's and women's economic advantage is associated with more marriage, less divorce, more marital happiness, and greater child well‐being. Important issues regarding measurement, reciprocal relations between family structure and economic well‐being, and race and gender effects remain unresolved.     

Single Mothers Always Lose? Union Dissolution and Perceived Changes in Material Well-Being in Lithuania

The article investigates the perceived changes in material well-being of single mothers due to union dissolution in Lithuania. The analysis is based on a nationally representative data set; our sample includes 415 single mothers with underaged children. At the core of the analysis is the effect of socioeconomic standing on the assessment of changes. I use the level of education as the proxy variable for the measurement of socioeconomic position and consider education on the individual and ex-couple level. The decline of material conditions after union dissolution was reported by 45% of the sample. The main results, based on the multivariate analysis, indicate the most negative effect of union dissolution for women from the educationally heterogeneous ex-couples, where women’s education was lower than men’s. Thus, union dissolution most negatively affects women, who were economically dependent in the previous partnership. Contrary to our expectation, we did not find any significant association between women’s education and the assessment of the changes in material well-being. However, ex-partner’s education is a significant predictor and shows the highest risk of reporting negative changes for women previously partnered with university-educated men. On a more general level, the article highlights the importance of the subjective indicators in the analysis of economic divorce outcomes.     

Is Your Spouse More Likely to Divorce You if You Are the Older Partner?

The authors assessed how the relative age of spouses affects whether men or women initiate a divorce, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. Ex‐spouses' reports of who left generally agreed, but not always, so the analysis used a latent class model embedded in an event‐history model with competing risks that the woman leaves the man or the man leaves the woman. Support was not found for the hypothesis that age heterogamy itself increases the odds of divorce: Even large age differences did not make men more likely to leave younger wives, and women's exits were as likely when the marriage is homogamous as when she was older. The main conclusion is that both men and women are more likely to leave if their spouse is older than they are. The effects were stronger for men, but the gender difference in effect size was not statistically significant.     

Reasons That Could Lead People to Divorce in an Evolutionary Perspective: Evidence from Cyprus

In the current research, we aimed to identify the reasons that could drive people to get a divorce. In Study 1, we employed qualitative research methods, and we identified 62 reasons that could potentially drive people to get a divorce. Using quantitative research methods, in Study 2 we classified these reasons into 7 broader factors. We found that being a harmful spouse was the most important factor for divorce, followed by incompatibility and in-law problems. We also found significant sex differences in several factors such as women indicating a higher willingness than men to divorce a harmful spouse. In addition, participants with children were less willing to divorce a harmful spouse than those who had no children. Finally, using second-order principal components analysis, we classified the 7 factors into 2 broader domains of reasons for getting a divorce.     

Till Porn Do Us Part? A Longitudinal Examination of Pornography Use and Divorce

As pornography use becomes more commonplace in the United States, and increasingly so among younger cohorts, a growing literature is considering its potential connection to key social and cultural institutions. The current study examined the relationship between pornography use and one such institution: marriage. We drew on three-wave longitudinal data from 2006 to 2014 General Social Survey panel studies to determine whether married Americans’ pornography use predicted their likelihood of divorce over time and under what social conditions. We employed a doubly robust strategy that combines entropy balancing with logistic regression models. We found that the probability of divorce roughly doubled for married Americans who began pornography use between survey waves (N = 2,120; odds ratio = 2.19), and that this relationship held for both women and men. Conversely, discontinuing pornography use between survey waves was associated with a lower probability of divorce, but only for women. Additional analyses also showed that the association between beginning pornography use and the probability of divorce was particularly strong among younger Americans, those who were less religious, and those who reported greater initial marital happiness. We conclude by discussing data limitations, considering potential intervening mechanisms and the possibility of reverse causation, and outlining implications for future research.     

Why Stay Married? Rewards,Barriers, and Marital Stability

This paper describes people's open‐ended, personal accounts of why they stay married. Most people perceived the cohesiveness of their marriages in terms of rewards and barriers, and few people referred to a lack of good alternatives. People who reported barriers only tended to be relatively unhappy with their marriages and were more likely than other individuals to be thinking about divorce. People who reported barriers only, compared with people who reported rewards only, were more likely to divorce during the next 14 years. This association was significant even after controlling for marital happiness and divorce proneness.     

Divorce in Hong Kong SAR, 1999–2011: A Review of 1,208 Family Court Cases

Divorce has increased dramatically in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia since the 2000s, whereas the West has seen a decline, suggesting there are factors specific to Hong Kong relating to divorce. This study examined a random sample of 1,208 divorce cases from the Hong Kong Family Court between 1999 and 2011. These marriages lasted 11 to 12 years on average, and most divorces occurred between the 5th and 7th years of marriage. Couples with a divorce history had a higher divorce risk, regardless of whether they had children, and predivorce marriage duration was positively associated with the number of children. The grounds cited for divorce indicate a shift toward no-fault divorce. Most petitioners were women, and mothers were generally granted child custody. Cross-border marriages and remarriages accounted for about one third of divorces, reflecting the impacts of differing sociocultural backgrounds and divorce history. The study’s implications for policymaking and service provision are discussed.     

Splitting the Marital Home: Gendered Property Division and Postdivorce Foreclosure

Divorce proceedings often involve splitting the marital home and contested claims over property and other assets. This case study examines the divorce–foreclosure nexus through key informant interviews, analysis of divorce files and foreclosure notices, and a review of court records on debt, remarriage, and criminal offending. We found that property disposition is a gendered process, with men receiving the marital home 1.7 times more often than women, even though they had more court debt, job instability, and criminal offending than their wives. Male defendants who hired an attorney received the house 85% of the time (52% for women defendants with an attorney). In postdivorce, men were more likely than women to remarry, have second mortgages, and to reoffend. We conclude that “equal” rather than “equitable” property division would reduce women’s structural disadvantage in divorce settlements and postdivorce home ownership.     

Permissive attitudes toward sexual behaviors: A clarification of theoretical explanations

Theory and research regarding permissive or nonpermissive attitudes toward sexual behaviors have contained apparent contradictions: Those maintaining that men and women differ in permissiveness rely on differential socialization theory; those maintaining that men and women share a common level of permissiveness suggest new cohort‐wide values as the explanation; and, discounting male/female differences, permissiveness has been held to vary by degree of involvement in familial or courtship processes. Questionnaire responses of 138 college students' attitudes toward seven sexual situations were analyzed by respondents' sex, class standing, attitude toward divorce, courtship status, and perception of parents' marital happiness. Results provided support for each of the theoretical explanations. Permissiveness varied by each of the independent variables and by specific sexual behaviors (e.g., premarital sexual intercourse, cohabitation, communal living, the nexus between pre‐ and extramarital sex and marital happiness, and the connection between each spouse's infidelity and divorce). Thus, simple theoretical explanations of permissiveness or its absence appear to be unwarranted. Behaviors must be specified and background variables must be taken into account.     

Long-run economic consequences of child support enforcement for the middle class

The purpose of this research is to examine the economic impact of child support transfers for middle-income custodial and noncustodial parent over a 15-year period. We have a substantial amount of research on low-income families, but little research about middle-income families. This research is based on computer simulations using income and expenditure data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) tables prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The results of the simulations challenge the majority of research that proposes that women suffer far more than men after family dissolution. Instead, we conclude that it is the noncustodial parent, usually the father, who suffers the most. In every case and for every income, according to our analyses, the payer of child support is never able to cover household expenditures if paying child support at guideline levels. By reducing the standard of living to the next lowest income category, in some cases to a level below the custodial parent’s, the parent owing child support is able to make child support payments and cover consumer expenditures. We use exchange and choice theories to analyze the economic alternatives in making a decision to divorce and consequently propose that public support for strict child support enforcement may encourage middle-income women to seek divorce. Micro-level decisions, we argue, have macro-level economic and social consequences for the middle-income parents.