# The Not So Great Reason Divorce Rates Are Declining



## Deejo

The Not So Great Reason Divorce Rates Are Declining

What’s changed isn’t marriage, but the types of people who are likeliest to get married.


----------



## wild jade

Seems like a pretty great reason to me. 

After all, I don't see anything particularly great about getting married super young when you have no idea who you are or what you want out of life. Or staying married because you have too many kids to look after and not enough money to leave.


----------



## Deejo

I think what I found interesting was the extrapolation that the link has more to do with socioeconomic prospects and opportunity. The notion that marriage becomes a luxury. In the west, the concept of the blow out wedding is still wildly pervasive. Whereas if you can't afford to get married, and see no need to ... then what would be the impetus? And certainly you and your partner aren't going to get hitched if you can't scrape up enough money to afford rent or food.

I still do believe that marriage as a sociological institution and a grounded environment for raising children is important, and valuable.

I can certainly state that I waited until I was relatively settled and felt like I had some direction, was clear on what I wanted and what my partner wanted, and executed a plan. Marriage. House. Kids. 

And even despite waiting until age 35, I still got it wrong.


----------



## sokillme

Marriage for marriage sake is stupid and leads to a lot of divorce. If you don't want to get married don't, sounds good to me.


----------



## Personal

Well in my second go round towards the end of being 28, I was relatively settled and had some direction etc. Which has to date turned out pretty well.

Yet I can't claim such success in the first instance, with her being 18 and pregnant while I was 19, which didn't work out so well even though we gave marriage a try.

In hindsight my ex-wife and I could have done without having that first marriage. On the bright side though, despite it all falling apart a few days before our first wedding anniversary, it did afford us some quality life experiences.


----------



## Rocky Mountain Yeti

Deejo said:


> I think what I found interesting was the extrapolation that the link has more to do with socioeconomic prospects and opportunity. The notion that marriage becomes a luxury. In the west, the concept of the blow out wedding is still wildly pervasive. Whereas if you can't afford to get married, and see no need to ... then what would be the impetus? And certainly you and your partner aren't going to get hitched if you can't scrape up enough money to afford rent or food.


People marrying primarily within their own socioeconomic level is nothing new, so I don't see this as a particularly negative phenomenon. If anything, knowing what divorce does to finances, it's probably best if the marriage rates are lower among those who could least afford the financial consequences of divorce. Logically speaking, this seems to be a good thing, not a bad thing.


----------



## Marduk

Interestingly, I think this might be a return to the pre-modern kind of thinking when it comes to marriage.

I mean, 200 years ago I doubt the common folk had big weddings. I think they might have had a small church wedding, or maybe even an informal ceremony and then moved in together. Isn’t this where common-law marriage came from?

My wife and I had a very small non-religious ceremony and had been living together for years. We only married because we wanted to be married before having kids.


----------



## personofinterest

It was interesting that the steepest decline seemed to be from those who went to college. And the author seemed to interpret that to be due to later age.

I think the education factor itself might be significant.

Now let me say up front that you do not have to go to college to be intelligent or educated (just to cover myself from the "my grandpappy was a self educated genius" thing lol)

But in my purely anecdotal observation, less educated and less intelligent people tend also to have less capacity to process complex situations and interactions and less self-controlled with regard to emotion. They tend to react with their first instinct regularly rather than process or think abstractly or beyond themselves.

I would never go so far as to say "dumber" people are not as good at navigating relationships.....but I have observed something almost similar in my a little over half-century life.


----------



## Deejo

Rocky Mountain Yeti said:


> People marrying primarily within their own socioeconomic level is nothing new, so I don't see this as a particularly negative phenomenon. If anything, knowing what divorce does to finances, it's probably best if the marriage rates are lower among those who could least afford the financial consequences of divorce. Logically speaking, this seems to be a good thing, not a bad thing.


My takeaway was that as far as measuring the success of couples over the long term, marriage may no longer be a good benchmark. They are presuming that there is little overall decrease in de-coupling. But due to the fact that fewer people are getting married, consequently the divorce rate has gone down.

I expect that a number of folks that read this may have very different takeaways. They touch on educated vs. (under)educated, economic inequality vs. economic opportunity of pooling resources ... which has always been a big factor with marriage historically.

I just listed the article and its tag line. I don't know that I have an opinion that the somewhat muddied presentation of the article is good, or bad.

I loved the idea of marriage ... then I didn't. As a result of my failed marriage, I didn't foresee it in my future ever again. And then I did. And now here I am, trying to hedge my bet towards success right along with the rest of you.

My wife walked by me last night while I was perusing the site looking for 'evil-doers'.
"You're on that site an awful lot."
Me:
"Honey, I'm a moderator."
Her:
"I have no idea what that is. So, you're important? You help people?"
Me:
"Depends upon who you ask."

Her:
"Oh." Kisses my forehead, goes and turns on Mindhunters.

I do love that woman, so.


----------



## Rocky Mountain Yeti

Deejo said:


> My takeaway was that as far as measuring the success of couples over the long term, marriage may no longer be a good benchmark. They are presuming that there is little overall decrease in de-coupling. But due to the fact that fewer people are getting married, consequently the divorce rate has gone down.
> 
> I expect that a number of folks that read this may have very different takeaways. They touch on educated vs. (under)educated, economic inequality vs. economic opportunity of pooling resources ... which has always been a big factor with marriage historically.
> 
> I just listed the article and its tag line. I don't know that I have an opinion that the somewhat muddied presentation of the article is good, or bad.
> 
> I loved the idea of marriage ... then I didn't. As a result of my failed marriage, I didn't foresee it in my future ever again. And then I did. And now here I am, trying to hedge my bet towards success right along with the rest of you.
> 
> My wife walked by me last night while I was perusing the site looking for 'evil-doers'.
> "You're on that site an awful lot."
> Me:
> "Honey, I'm a moderator."
> Her:
> "I have no idea what that is. So, you're important? You help people?"
> Me:
> "Depends upon who you ask."
> 
> Her:
> "Oh." Kisses my forehead, goes and turns on Mindhunters.
> 
> I do love that woman, so.


Marvelous post. :smile2:


----------



## wild jade

Deejo said:


> I think what I found interesting was the extrapolation that the link has more to do with socioeconomic prospects and opportunity. The notion that marriage becomes a luxury. In the west, the concept of the blow out wedding is still wildly pervasive. Whereas if you can't afford to get married, and see no need to ... then what would be the impetus? And certainly you and your partner aren't going to get hitched if you can't scrape up enough money to afford rent or food.
> 
> I still do believe that marriage as a sociological institution and a grounded environment for raising children is important, and valuable.
> 
> I can certainly state that I waited until I was relatively settled and felt like I had some direction, was clear on what I wanted and what my partner wanted, and executed a plan. Marriage. House. Kids.
> 
> And even despite waiting until age 35, I still got it wrong.


Honestly, I don't quite get why the one quoted author seems to think that having a lower income makes it more difficult to form a stable relationship. What's the connection there? Pooling resources is something you can do at any income level isn't? 

I do get that you increase stratification when the "haves" pool together with other "haves", leaving the "have-nots" even further behind. But travel just about anywhere and it's easy to see that there are plenty of people without many resources with very stable relationships. 

I also get that marriage seems rather beside the point for people who aren't particularly religious or don't really care for the ceremonial aspects.

Personally, I waited until 30, knew who I was and what a PITA I can be -- and until I met someone who I had a real connection with (aka actually thinks that I'm not a PITA, I'm *funny*)


----------



## wild jade

personofinterest said:


> But in my purely anecdotal observation, less educated and less intelligent people tend also to have less capacity to process complex situations and interactions and less self-controlled with regard to emotion. They tend to react with their first instinct regularly rather than process or think abstractly or beyond themselves.
> 
> I would never go so far as to say "dumber" people are not as good at navigating relationships.....but I have observed something almost similar in my a little over half-century life.


IME, there are lots of people who are very good at abstract reasoning, but quite dumb when it comes to most anything in real life. Being educated doesn't actually mean you are smarter than the next guy -- or less self-centred.


----------



## personofinterest

wild jade said:


> personofinterest said:
> 
> 
> 
> But in my purely anecdotal observation, less educated and less intelligent people tend also to have less capacity to process complex situations and interactions and less self-controlled with regard to emotion. They tend to react with their first instinct regularly rather than process or think abstractly or beyond themselves.
> 
> I would never go so far as to say "dumber" people are not as good at navigating relationships.....but I have observed something almost similar in my a little over half-century life.
> 
> 
> 
> IME, there are lots of people who are very good at abstract reasoning, but quite dumb when it comes to most anything in real life. Being educated doesn't actually mean you are smarter than the next guy -- or less self-centred.
Click to expand...

 Where does reading comprehension fall on that scale? Because I made a pretty clear disclaimer that you don't have to be educated or go to college to be smart. But whatever


----------



## OnTheFly

“Choose wisely, act kindly” before and after marriage and suddenly age won’t be a factor in the long term success of a marriage.

My $0.02

Carry on


----------



## Deejo

wild jade said:


> Honestly, I don't quite get why the one quoted author seems to think that having a lower income makes it more difficult to form a stable relationship. What's the connection there? Pooling resources is something you can do at any income level isn't?
> 
> I do get that you increase stratification when the "haves" pool together with other "haves", leaving the "have-nots" even further behind. But travel just about anywhere and it's easy to see that there are plenty of people without many resources with very stable relationships.
> 
> I also get that marriage seems rather beside the point for people who aren't particularly religious or don't really care for the ceremonial aspects.
> 
> Personally, I waited until 30, knew who I was and what a PITA I can be -- and until I met someone who I had a real connection with (aka actually thinks that I'm not a PITA, I'm *funny*)


The article, despite being concise was far from clear, which is part of the reason I posted it.

Fundamentally, the 'bad' that the author is referring to is the stratification that you highlight above. On the contrary, they point out that it is likely that married/unmarried LTR's succeed or fail with similar rates. I don't think they are claiming that less education, or less economic/earning potential, results in fewer LTR's for those folks ... but those folks are marrying with less frequency than those with higher education, more economic opportunity. The issue the research had, is that you can't study divorce rates without having a marriage as a precursor.


----------



## Rocky Mountain Yeti

OnTheFly said:


> “Choose wisely, act kindly” before and after marriage and suddenly age won’t be a factor in the long term success of a marriage.
> 
> My $0.02
> 
> Carry on


... it's much more difficult to "choose wisely" when one young (immature, or even in the best of cases, inexperienced)


----------



## UpsideDownWorld11

It basically is saying if you are some dude making minimum wage, no chick is gonna marry you. Wheras in the past, those same blue collar jobs, could have atleast have been possible to support a family.


----------



## wild jade

Deejo said:


> The article, despite being concise was far from clear, which is part of the reason I posted it.
> 
> Fundamentally, the 'bad' that the author is referring to is the stratification that you highlight above. On the contrary, they point out that it is likely that married/unmarried LTR's succeed or fail with similar rates. I don't think they are claiming that less education, or less economic/earning potential, results in fewer LTR's for those folks ... but those folks are marrying with less frequency than those with higher education, more economic opportunity. The issue the research had, is that you can't study divorce rates without having a marriage as a precursor.


It was this comment that I was referring to:


> Chen connects this trend to the decline of well-paying jobs for those without college degrees, which, he argues, makes it harder to form more stable relationships.


But maybe @UpsideDownWorld11 got it right. No one wants to stay attached to someone without money? At least in America where the American dream is alive and well?

Research used to claim that the more educated you were, the less likely to marry and have kids. Now it seems we've reversed? 

They also used to say that co-habitating couples were longer lasting than married ones ....it is something you can measure and it would be interesting to know if it's still true.


----------



## wild jade

personofinterest said:


> Where does reading comprehension fall on that scale? Because I made a pretty clear disclaimer that you don't have to be educated or go to college to be smart. But whatever


Well, sure. But you also observed that less educated and less intelligent people don't seem to be good at complex reasoning or thinking beyond themselves, and seemed to be suggesting why this may be why they aren't able to keep relationships.

I was just saying that in my experience, the ability for complex reasoning doesn't at all figure into ones ability to be street smart or emotionally intelligent or well able to care for others in deep relationships. 

Indeed a lot of the supposedly super smart people are much worse at these sorts of skills than your average person who's going on instinct.


----------



## Deejo

wild jade said:


> It was this comment that I was referring to:
> 
> 
> But maybe @UpsideDownWorld11 got it right. No one wants to stay attached to someone without money? At least in America where the American dream is alive and well?
> 
> Research used to claim that the more educated you were, the less likely to marry and have kids. Now it seems we've reversed?
> 
> They also used to say that co-habitating couples were longer lasting than married ones ....it is something you can measure and it would be interesting to know if it's still true.


Certainly seems that this study was focused in the United States. For a study on the longevity of cohabiting LTR's, I suspect Scandinavia would be a good spot.


----------



## Deejo

There is a link to the originating study in this article. But if you want to view it, it will cost you.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/04/enough-income-and-wealth-cohabiting-couples-say-i-do


----------



## 2ntnuf

Thanks for posting that, @Deejo. The article and the thread are interesting. What came up for me is, of those who do not get married but are living together, what is their 'divorce' rate? 

It seems as though they have something similar to marriage, though I don't know how similar. I also wonder if there is a difference in the types of dedication to partners between married couples and those who live together? I guess what I am saying is, are married couples more monogamous and those living together less? Also, what other differences are there in their thinking, beliefs, boundaries and actions? 

Well, I don't expect you to look all that up, if I won't. Just wanted to comment.


----------

