RELEASE AT WILL August 10, 1999
DIVORCE RATES DECLINING FOR CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
The odds that children whose parents suffered divorce will end their own marriages declined by almost 50 percent between the years 1973 and 1996, according to research from the University of Utah published in the August issue of Demography.
Before 1975, people from divorced families were about 2.5 times more likely to have dissolved their marriages than people from intact families. By 1996, that number had decreased by 50 percent to 1.4 times the likelihood, the study finds.
The study's author, Nicholas H. Wolfinger, an assistant professor in the U.'s Department of Family and Consumer Studies, believes the drop in divorce transmission over the 25-year study period signals a trend.
In a paper he prepared for the 1999 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago, Wolfinger attributes the decline to two factors: society's increased tolerance for divorce, which has weakened its negative effects on children; and a notable increase in the number of people from divorced families who avoid marriage altogether.
He will present the paper, "Coupling and Uncoupling: Changing Marriage Patterns and the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce," at the ASA meeting on August 10.
For his research, Wolfinger used data from the NORC General Social Survey (GSS), a random sample of about 22,000 individuals, age 18 to 89, inhabiting English-speaking households within the continental United States. Conducted annually or biennially since 1972, the survey is one of the most widely used by social scientists.
Wolfinger looked at the 83 percent of GSS respondents who were raised by intact two-parent families, mother-only families resulting from a divorce, and families comprised of a divorced mother and stepfather.
He believes that various negative effects of divorce have weakened over the years. "In my earlier research I contend that the declining rate of divorce transmission can be explained by a lessening of divorce's harmful effects on children," he says.
Divorce has become more socially acceptable, he explains. "Single mothers and their children don't suffer the same ostracism they once did. And because social and legal barriers to divorce have diminished, most couples don't wait as long before ending a marriage," he says.
As a result, children don't endure as much parental acrimony. Society's acceptance means that all involved don't suffer as much; especially children, who emerge in better psychological shape and, therefore, better equipped to succeed in their own marriages, says Wolfinger.
A second explanation for the trend in divorce transmission involves the declining marriage rate for people from divorced families, says Wolfinger.
He found that in 1973, the beginning of the study period, parental divorce greatly increased the likelihood of offspring marriage. Children of divorce were 36 percent more likely to marry than were people from intact families. By 1996, the children of divorce were slightly less likely to marry than were people from intact families.
"If the children of divorce are more likely to avoid marriage altogether, then it is possible that those less suited to successful relationships are those least likely to get married," he explains. This would mean that people from divorced families were faring better simply because those unfit for marriage never married in the first place, he says.
Worried that this second hypothesis threatened the integrity of the first, because it implied that the negative effects of divorce on children have not abated over time, Wolfinger tested both.
His research confirmed that the decreasing propensity to marry explains a small portion of the decline in the intergenerational transmission of divorce.
"But a larger portion must be attributed to a decline in the negative consequences of growing up in a nonintact family," he says.
Wolfinger say his research has implications for legal and public policy considerations of divorce. Several states have tried to pass laws to restrict divorce or make it more difficult to acquire, he says.
The purpose of these restrictions is to prevent divorce and its negative consequences. But they could have exactly the opposite effect, because they trap children within conflicted marriages, says Wolfinger.
"As I have shown, when divorce was uncommon and heavily stigmatized its toll on children was much greater." ###
Source: Nick Wolfinger, 581-7491 ([email protected])
ASA web site: (www.asanet.org) Writer: Kirsten Wille, 581-7975 ([email protected])
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