Throughout the last several decades, though perhaps not so much lately, we've often heard each of the following claims about divorce, and a lot of people, apparently, have come to believe them. A 2002 Harvard study, however, has shown each of them to be wrong. Maybe that's why enthusiasm for these notions seems to waned somewhat in recent years.
Here are the "ten myths" about divorce:
- Because people learn from their bad experiences, second marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages.
- Living together before marriage is a good way to reduce the chances of eventually divorcing.
- Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the children recover relatively quickly.
- Having a child together will help a couple to improve marital satisfaction and prevent a divorce.
- Following divorce, the woman's standard of living plummets by seventy three percent while that of the man's improves by forty two percent.
- When parents don't get along, children are better off if their parents divorce than if they stay together.
- Because they are more cautious in entering marital relationships and also have a strong determination to avoid the possibility of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have as much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.
- Following divorce, the children involved are better off in step-families than in single-parent families.
- Being very unhappy at certain points in a marriage is a good sign that the marriage will eventually end in divorce.
- It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings.
There's an explanation of why each of these commonly held beliefs is wrong at the link.
In the same vein the prologue to this book also makes for fascinating reading.
Finally, a friend of mine tells me that there's another Harvard study, though I was unable to find it, which shows that weddings held in a church service have a divorce rate of one out of fifty marriages, but marriages in which the couple attends church every week, reads the Bible and prays together have a divorce rate of one out of 1,105. If that's accurate it's pretty astonishing.
It would be interesting to know what the divorce rate is for couples joined in a civil ceremony.
RLC