Growing up in a divorced family leads to a variety of difficulties for adult offspring in their own partnerships. One of the best known and most powerful is the divorce cycle, the transmission of ...divorce from one generation to the next. This book examines how the divorce cycle has transformed family life in contemporary America by drawing on two national data sets. Compared to people from intact families, the children of divorce are more likely to marry as teenagers, but less likely to wed overall, more likely to marry people from divorced families, more likely to dissolve second and third marriages, and less likely to marry their live-in partners. Yet some of the adverse consequences of parental divorce have abated even as divorce itself proliferated and became more socially accepted. Taken together, these findings show how parental divorce is a strong force in people's lives and society as a whole.
The rise of the Pentecostal movement in the last three decades is one of the most striking features in the global topography of contemporary religion. In Switzerland, the Pentecostal or charismatic ...movement is the most popular strand of migrant Christianity. This article is based on a three-year online ethnographic participant observation of different Nigerian-led online Pente-costal groups. The use of diverse interactive spaces seems to be of particular significance to both mega and non-mega Nigerian-led Pentecostal migrant churches in the country. By exploring the social practices of online commu-nities such as the Glorious Vessels International WhatsApp chat group, the article shows how different forms of biblical patriarchy shape conversations that “recognise” or “repress” the rights and roles of women – their economic status and sexuality in born-again movements. The exchange of ideas that ensued on the issues of divorce among members of Glorious Vessels International shows how bargaining in the physical (real) world is transferred into the online environment. I analyse this phenomenon by understanding the ideal online religious community as an assemblage that promotes a certain gendered image of the prosperous family.
High rates of divorce, often taken to be a modern and western phenomenon, were also typical of medieval Islamic societies. By pitting these high rates of divorce against the Islamic ideal of ...marriage,Yossef Rapoport radically challenges usual assumptions about the legal inferiority of Muslim women and their economic dependence on men. He argues that marriages in late medieval Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem had little in common with the patriarchal models advocated by jurists and moralists. The transmission of dowries, women's access to waged labour, and the strict separation of property between spouses made divorce easy and normative, initiated by wives as often as by their husbands. This carefully researched work of social history is interwoven with intimate accounts of individual medieval lives, making for a truly compelling read. It will be of interest to scholars of all disciplines concerned with the history of women and gender in Islam.
This article critically evaluates the available data on trends in divorce in the United States. We find that both vital statistics and retrospective survey data on divorce after 1990 underestimate ...recent marital instability. These flawed data have led some analysts to conclude that divorce has been stable or declining for the past three decades. Using new data from the American Community Survey and controlling for changes in the age composition of the married population, we conclude that there was actually a substantial increase in age-standardized divorce rates between 1990 and 2008. Divorce rates have doubled over the past two decades among persons over age 35. Among the youngest couples, however, divorce rates are stable or declining. If current trends continue, overall age-standardized divorce rates could level off or even decline over the next few decades. We argue that the leveling of divorce among persons born since 1980 probably reflects the increasing selectivity of marriage.
We analyze the effect on divorce rates of the legal reforms leading to “easier divorce” that took place in Europe during the last four decades. We construct a 54-year-long panel and exploit the ...different timing and nature of the reforms in divorce laws across countries. The reforms range from countries that legalized divorce to the introduction of no-fault grounds and unilateral divorce. We estimate that the introduction of no-fault, unilateral divorce increased the divorce rate by about 0.6, a sizeable effect given the average rate of 2 divorces per 1000 people in 2002.
In this study, I examined gender differences in the consequences of divorce by tracing annual change in 20 outcome measures covering four domains: economic, housing and domestic, health and ...well-being, and social. I used data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and fixed-effects panel regression models on a sample of N = 18,030 individuals initially observed in a marital union, N = 1,220 of whom divorced across the observation period (1984-2015). Three main findings emerged from the analysis. First, men were more vulnerable to short-term consequences of divorce for subjective measures of well-being, but postdivorce adaptation alleviated gender differences in these outcomes. Second, a medium-term view on multiple outcomes showed more similarity than differences between women and men. The medium-term consequences of divorce were similar in terms of subjective economic well-being; mental health, physical health, and psychological well-being; residential moves, homeownership, and satisfaction with housework; and chances of repartnering, social integration with friends and relatives, and feelings of loneliness. Third, the key domain in which large and persistent gender differences emerged were women's disproportionate losses in household income and associated increases in their risk of poverty and single parenting. Taken together, these findings suggest that men's disproportionate strain of divorce is transient, whereas women's is chronic.
Late-life divorce is increasing in the Western world, including among family-oriented societies like Israel in which the most common family status for older adults (age 60 years and older) is being ...in a heterosexual long-term marriage with adult children. Within a life-course framework, we use both dyadic and individual interview analysis to explore the process that led to the timing of late-life divorce. Understanding this process from dyadic and individual perspectives could strengthen knowledge regarding this expanding phenomenon in family-oriented societies and could contribute to developing targeted interventions and policies for such couples. Semi-structured interviews were conducted separately with 44 heterosexual ex-spouses comprised of 10 dyads ( n = 20) and 24 individuals ( n = 13 women; n = 11 men). The divorces were mostly after age 60 and followed a long-term marriage with children. Two themes emerged from the analysis: the long-term phase of divorce delay despite longstanding motivations, and the moment of final decision with its various background accelerators. The discussion addresses intersections between personal time, family time, and social/cultural time related to divorce, and between intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects. Implications for family gerontology are presented.
A fresh perspective on the seamy side of history. Maria Nicolaou has done considerable research into the largely unexplored area of divorce and marital separation from the Tudor period to the early ...Victorian era. Divorced, Beheaded, Sold is full of scandalous, little-known stories of wife sale, marital discord and audacious escapades of errant spouses, this is an interesting, as well as informative read in the same vein as Maureen Waller's The English Marriage and Kate Summerscale's Mrs Robinson's Disgrace. Maria Nicolaou reveals how people ended their marriages in the days before divorce was readily available - from committing bigamy to selling a wife at market. Her book is full of colourful characters and warring spouses, like Con Philips, who fought off her husband with a gun filled with firework powder; the Duke of Grafton, who hired an army of detectives to spy on his wife and obtain proof of her adultery; and Marion Jones, who recruited a gang to take back her property from her husband.
PDF
