show tonight/replies/divorce stats - 2/13/00
owner-smartmarriages
owner-smartmarriages
Sun Feb 13 17:32:36 EST 2000
from: Smart Marriages
CNN, Marriage in the Millenium, February
13, 2000 9 pm EST, 6 pm PST. Features David Poponoe and CONNECTIONS
The TV Guide indicates CNN & TIME - that's it.
______________________
This is in reply to Dick and Carol Cronk's posting of the longest married
couple in the U.S. 2000. Our Marriage Commission hosted "Utah Celebrates
Marriage" last September to honor living couples married 70 years or
more. 35 couples attended. Some were unable to come because of
transportation problems or health issues. The longest living married
couple in Utah are the Chipmans who have been married 76 years, married
in November 1923. They attended our celebration and were darling. There
was a couple in Utah who were featured in Life Magazine back in the 60's
when they were still alive. They were from Fillmore, UT and were married
82years! Can you believe it?! There is a statue of them in that town's
museum.
Sincerely, Abbie Vianes, Director Governor's Commission on Marriage
(Utah)
________________
Diane,
Love Gallagher's poem on cohabitating couples. Women need to wise up;
they're getting
taken advantage of. Your sight is so helpful and informative. I'll be
using
these statistics in my teachings. THANKS!
Norma Tilton
__________________
Here is another idea for those of you out there teaching. I also suggest
you order
the audio tape of the workshop from the 1998 Smart Marriages conference:
#507 - The Fountainhead: Teaching Marriage Classes to Undergrads -
"Instructors share innovative curricula to prime a discussion on how to
make courses more meaningful in the lives - and future marriages - of
students. Bring materials for exchange." 90 minutes,
$10 from 800-241-7785 - diane
>Diane,
>I am the one who wrote you about having a student division of
>CMFCE a couple of months ago. I am currently teaching two graduate level
courses
>to psychologists-in-training and using a quite a bit of material from
>the CMFCE. Today, in "Separation and Divorce," we did an exercise called
>"Should This Marriage be Saved?" I gave four real-life vignettes and asked
>them to discuss them and come up with their thoughts. Most felt that the
>marriages were doomed. Imagine their surprise when I told them that more
>than half the stories were of couples who had eventually saved their
>marriages. They were astounded and some found it almost unbelievable. We
>still have a lot of work to do, but I believe I'm planting some seeds.
>
>I would like at least 50 flyers on the conference in Denver to share
>with my students. I'm hoping that this will get more enthusiasm going on
>our campus. From there we might start to do some preventative seminars,
>psycho-educational events in the community, etc.
>Jennifer L. Baker MS LMFT
_________________
Diane, I get the newletter from smartmarriages and saw the article on
cohabitation.
I would like to
see studies on how cohab. affects the Boomers age group---we are likely
to have
been married, and divorced and very cynical about the institution,
children grown and just
want to live with someone who is good company but without all the
legality; and besides,
keeping your own financial independence at this stage of life is probably
a good idea. Could you find info relating to that concern? I'm
wondering if the statistics on longevity for those couples is the same or
better. Thanks, Pat M
________________
This is taken from the Family Sci list, thought it would be interesting
to the CMFCE
list:
Norman,
Some thoughts are embedded...
> I for one am surprised to read that the US divorce rate has declined
> 20% since 1979, since I've never seen any evidence for that. Let me
> ask what that means:
Every recent, decent m&f textbook shows the decline in a table or graph.
The decline applies equally to the crude (divs/pop) and refined
(divs/married women) rate.
> If the divorce rate in 1979 was approximately 50%, does that mean 50%
> of all people who were married could be estimated to get divorced at
> some point in their lifetime?
50% is mentioned a lot, but it's a myth. First, we need to distinguish
annual rates from lifetime estimates. The 20% decline applies to the
annual
rate. Nobody that I'm aware of has calculated a % change in the real
lifetime estimate. The highest lifetime projection ever made was by Martin
& Bumpass (Demog, 1989), based on data from the 1970s. Nevertheless, no
marriage cohort has yet finished life with as many as 50% having divorced.
> If that is true, then a decline of 20% in that figure would be .5 x .2
> or 10%, so at present we can estimate that approximately 40% of those
> people who are married will get divorced at some point in their
> lifetime?
If I wanted to estimate the lifetime probability before a cohort entirely
died off, I'd find out what % of couples in a cohort divorce by the 7th
wedding anniversary, then I'd multiply this by two. This works because (at
least since the late 1950s) the median duration of marriage at divorce has
been right around 7 years. In other words, half of all the divorces that
will occur happen in those first 7 years of marriage. I haven't done this
for all cohorts, but no cohort that I have checked ends up with a lifetime
divorce estimate over 44%. Martin & Bumpass thought the peak might end up
being 63% for couples marrying in the 1970s, but they based this on
including separated couples (on the questionable assumption that none
would
ever reconcile) and on evidence that some people misreport being married
when they are actually divorced or separated (which should be less
relevant
if divorce data come from civil records of divorce). Anyway, nobody would
dipute that the rate of divorce + separation is greater than the divorce
rate alone.
> Or are we assuming that 50% of those who got married in 1979 will get
> divorced sooner or later, but only 40% of those who got married in
> 1999 will get divorced? Yes, the age at marriage has increased
> somewhat in 20 years. And perhaps a significant percentage of couples
> have avoided the stigma of divorce by cohabiting instead of marrying.
Two things are certain: age at marriage started going up 23 years before
the divorce rate turned down (so that's a bogus factor), and cohab rates
started going up well before 1979 (so that's another bogus factor). In any
case, half of the people who didn't divorce in 1980, but who would have if
the divorce rate had kept rising, got married 1973-79. The other half got
married before 1973. In other words, any social change model with the
divorce rate as the outcome needs to build in the idea that divorce lags
marriage.
> What does this figure really mean? If it is strongly reflective of
> the increased preference for nonmarital cohabitation, is the
> separation + divorce rate significantly different now from what it was
> in 1979?
We do know that the relationship termination rate for cohabiting couples
is
higher than it is for married couples. We also know that the termination
rate is higher still for casually and serious dating couples who neither
cohabit nor marry. In this relative sense at least, that old wedding
ceremony (whether elaborate or not), helps keep couples together ("for
better or worse") more often than the other kinds of transitions into
relationships. Anybody who has dated knows this intuitively. Nothing is
more fragile than a dating relationship. If the average person has 6
serious dating partners before marrying the 6th one, the termination rate
for serious dating couples is 83%!
The "meaning" problem is not with the changing termination rate itself,
rather that we don't know why married couples have increasingly decided to
stay married since 1979, particularly because the factors we most often
conjure were marching along both well before and well after 1979. We
cannot
rule out a threshold effect, although I've not seen one effectively
argued.
Such an argument would claim that, once something becomes popular at a
critical level (waiting past a certain age to get married, cohabiting,
etc.), that something has enough momentum to alter the rate of something
else.
Prof. David M. Klein, PhD.
Dept. of Sociology
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Diane Sollee, director
Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
5310 Belt Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961
www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332 (FAX 202-362-0973) Email: cmfce at smartmarriages.com
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