Marriage and Divorce Statistics in the United States

Marriage and Divorce Statistics in the United States

Here’s a sampling of some of the most recently available statistics on marriage and divorce in the United States of America:

* There were approximately 2,230,000 marriages in 2005, down from 2,279,000 the previous year, despite a total population increase of 2.9 million over the same period.

* The divorce rate in 2005 (per 1,000 people) was 3.6, the lowest rate since 1970, and down from 4.2 in 2000 and from 4.7 in 1990. (The peak was at 5.3 in 1981, according to the Associated Press.)

* The marriage rate in 2005 (per 1,000) was 7.5, down from 7.8 the previous year.

* In 2004, the state with the highest reported divorce rate was Nevada, at 6.4 (per 1,000). Arkansas was a close second, with a divorce rate of 6.3, followed by Wyoming at 5.3.

* The District of Columbia had the lowest reported divorce rate, at 1.7, followed by Massachusetts at 2.2 and Pennsylvania at 2.5. (Figures were not complete for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, or Oklahoma.)

* 8.1% of coupled households consist of unmarried heterosexual partners, according to The State of Our Unions 2005, a report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. The same study said that only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents — the lowest figure in the Western world.

* As of 2003, 43.7% of custodial mothers and 56.2% of custodial fathers were either separated or divorced. And in 2002, 7.8 million Americans paid about $40 billion in child and/or spousal support (84% of the payers were male).

* Americans tend to get married more between June and October than during the rest of the year. In 2005, August had the most marriages at about 235,000 or a rate of 9.3 per 1,000 people. The previous year, July was the highest month at 246,000, or a rate of 9.9; this doubled the lowest month in 2004, January.

In the last 20 years, divorce statistics have skyrocketed. Fifty percent of U.S. marriages are ending in divorce. The trauma to this country is overwhelming. We have to do something about stopping it.

American couples are marrying later, divorcing more frequently, and are readier to live together without marrying. Almost all the large increase in working women has occurred among married women, but the wife’s contribution to family income has probably saved many marriages, for people in the lowest socioeconomic groups are more likely to divorce than those who “have it made.”

Consequences of Divorce

The consequences of divorce are far-reaching. Divorce raises the risk that children won’t graduate from high school or will themselves have children while they are still teenagers.

We used to think that preschool kids were most affected by divorce, but studies don’t show that to be true. There’s not one age that is clearly better or clearly worse. Kids are more at risk if their parents are still fighting after the divorce, especially if they use the children as pawns. Kids caught in the middle don’t do well.

Divorce has an impact on these children’s future in another way. The kids of divorced families grow up without learning the skills they need in their own relationships.

Divorce teaches them not to trust. When teenage girls become sexually active after their parents divorce, it can be because they reason that relationships never last, so why not?

Economic problems are increasingly given as reasons for seeking a divorce. Husbands complain they are fed up with meeting the mortgage or paying high rents. A growing number of men consider themselves better off single. One husband recently sought advice on divorce proceedings because he claimed his wife had just spent $750, half his month’s salary, on exotic plants for the living room.

A lot of couples want to live way above their means and they get into the red. For them, divorce is often the easiest way out.

According to popular beliefs, a rise in divorce statistics indicates that couples are not doing such a good job at keeping their vows. If partners love each other unconditionally, there is the understanding that whatever happened in the past, whatever is happening at present and whatever is to happen, will not change a couple s love for each other. This influences the passion with which the vows are made and kept

We can’t reverse the historical trends that are pulling the family apart, nor, for the most part, would we want to. Making women subservient to men, restoring tough divorce laws and withdrawing Social Security would certainly force many families to stay together, but the hardship caused by these moves would far outweigh that benefit.

But if something isn’t done to strengthen the social family, it will continue to dissolve, says David Popenoe, who has devoted his academic career to studying the family.

The most serious threat to the family – at least as far as children are concerned – is the high divorce rate, but there is currently very little interest in the problem.

“There are no national anti-divorce movements like those for anti-abortion, no national commissions examining the problem of divorce like those for pornography, and few indignant outcries from the pulpit about marital dissolution of the kind heard frequently about premarital sexuality,” he wrote in a paper for the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank in New York that he helped to organize.

He also believes greater efforts should be made to accommodate women in the workplace, so parents will experience less when they try to combine a career with parenting.

Until recently, the workplace has been organized around a single earner married to someone who stays home with the kids.

The goal should be a system that allows both parents to spend more time with their children. The idea of affluence was to provide more leisure time, and yet we’re working our tails off and neglecting our children.

The most significant changes must come in people themselves. We should stress that the individualistic ethos has gone too far, that children are being woefully shortchanged, and that, in the long run, strong families represent the best path toward self-fulfillment and personal happiness.