Divorce

1
Divorce
2
Prevalence of Divorce

• Dramatic and far reaching
• Half of marriages today will end in divorce
• Divorce rate slide
• Serious family problem
• Not all negative and consequences may not last
  forever

3
Why has the divorce rate increased?

• Rise of individualism
• Economic factors
• Stagnating wages for all men
• Declining wages for African American men
• Womens increased labor force participation and
  earnings
• Rising expectations of marriage
• Declining social stigma

4
What are the major reasons people divorce?

• Breakdown of communication
• Low marital quality
• Personal problems

5
What are the economic impacts of divorce?

• Lower standard of living, especially for women.
• Women as a whole experience a 36 decline in
  standard of living
• Men experience a 28 increase
• 25 of women fall into poverty within 5 years
  after divorce
• Mothers post-separation standard of living was ½
  of fathers
• More chronic financial problems like difficulty
  paying bills

6
Reasons for economic strain for women

• Greater work-family conflict, especially as
  single mothers
• Interrupted work history
• Discrimination in hiring and wages (data)

7
Economic recovery

• For womenremarriage
• For men, doesnt matter.
• One year after divorce, mens income back to 90
  of predivorce income.

8
What are the Psychological and Emotional
Consequences?

• Loss of friends and family
• Problems in new relationships (women)
• Problems with kids (women)
• Salience of marital and family relationships for
  women
• White women have more difficulty
• African American women have more social support,
  less stigma

9
What are the psychological and emotional
consequences?

• Other studies show no differences between men and
  women
• Except in terms of financial well being

10
What are the Psychological and Emotional
Consequences?

• Compared with married couples, divorced are more
  likely to be distressed, to have low
  self-concepts, and to suffer health problems.
• These findings hold up cross-culturally
• Contentious scholarly debates about outcomes
• Benefits of divorce vs. negative impacts
• Wallerstein, Hetherington, Amato

11
What are the consequences for children?

• Parents have more difficulty raising their
  children
• The most difficulty comes 1-2 years before,
  during and after the divorce.
• ½ all children will live in a single parent home,
  1/3 will live in a step family home by the time
  they are 19

12
What are the consequences for children?

• Meta-analysis of 92 studies showed that children
  from divorced families scored lower than children
  from continuously married parents on
• Academic achievement
• Conduct
• Psychological adjustment
• Self-concept
• Social competence

13
How can we make sense of this?

• Amato model of adjustment to divorce
• Based on Double ABCX model
• Assumption that divorce is a crisis but that
  adjustment can occur
• Need to look at stressors, resources, and
  definition of situation

14
Stressors

• Sole parenting responsibility
• Loss of emotional support from friends and family
• Continuing conflict with spouse
• Economic decline
• Other events such as moves to another residence

15
What makes a difference for adults?

• Resources
• Education
• Employment
• Large networks of supportive friends and kin
• Support from a new partner (emotional and
  financial benefits)

16
What makes a difference for adults?

• Cognitive appraisal
• Strong belief in life time commitment
• Troubled by moral contradictions of end of own
  relationship
• A lot of problems in marriagehappier after
  divorce

17
Stressors for children

• Decline in parent nurturing, control and support
• Loss of contact with one parent
• Continuing parental conflict
• Economic decline
• Other stressful eventsmoving, changing schools

18
What makes a difference for children?

• Quality of parenting
• A good relationship with the custodial parent is
  especially important
• Manageable relationship between parents
• Conflict is encapsulated, not overt
• Conflict is not physical

19
What makes a difference for children?

• Social support from peers
• Therapeutic relationships
• Problem-solving coping
• Not to blame selves