Divorce in Psychosocial Perspective

Theory and Research

Joseph Guttmann

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9781135694555
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

Many books deal with divorce and its aftermath -- some deal with the impact of divorce on children and families, others with the legal or sociological aspects of divorce, and a few focus on divorced mothers and fathers. Most of these books are characterized by their practical orientation toward the issues and problems posed by divorce. None of these, however, have attempted to offer an integrated view of the massive amount of theoretical and research literature on divorced adults and their children. In addition, none present a comprehensive view of divorce as a psychological process within its larger social context. Filling that void, this book:
* offers a comprehensive view of divorce as a social, interpersonal and psychological phenomenon,
* reviews the theory and research on divorce focusing on the major protagonists of the divorce drama: the mother, the father and the children, and
* introduces a social-psychological theory of divorce process.

1	Divorce in Its Social Context

Much of this book deals with divorce as a personal experience within a social context. This chapter, however, discusses divorce from the social perspective. The assumption is that in order to understand the etiology and consequences of divorce we must view divorce as a personal matter that is greatly affected by the social and cultural environment in which it occurs. It is the knowledge of the particular interaction between personal and social factors that gives us a better comprehension of the divorce phenomenon.

Even a cursory look at the divorce rate and trend in past decades shows the susceptibility of the divorce rate to short- and long-term fluctuations. For example, the rate of divorce dropped during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and quickly returned to its earlier level afterward. Then, toward the end of World War II and immediately after, it increased dramatically and reached a peak in 1946. The rate then decreased very rapidly, reaching almost its prewar level, only to mount again to record heights in the early 1970s. The aim of this chapter is to present the principal social factors that may account for these fluctuations in the frequency and trend of divorce. The chapter begins with a consideration of the difference, indeed the tension, between individualistic and social explanations of divorce. It then reviews the relevant statistics, and discusses the legal, social, cultural, and economic contexts that affect the divorce rate and are affected by divorce.

INDIVIDUALISTIC VERSUS SOCIAL EXPLANATIONS OF DIVORCE

The United States has among the highest divorce rate among the industrialized countries, but it also has among the highest marriage and remarriage rates. These rates are not independent of each other, but are part of the same phenomenon. Common ideological and social factors lead to marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

Divorce was for decades perceived not only as an indication of pathology in divorcing individuals, but also as a social disease. The implicit and explicit prevailing belief was that divorce was harmful to the individuals involved and to society, and was an offense against God (Popenoe, 1988). Therefore, a remedy had to be found. The problem was at first believed to be the immorality of those involved; and the appropriate response was therefore censure and punishment. Later, as social scientists looked at the broader picture, they assumed that social ills were also to blame for the breakdown of families. They called on lawmakers to solve at least some of these social defects, and to protect the victims by raising high legal barriers against divorce. The psychological approach offered yet another view: Marital dissolution stems from the difficulties experienced by individuals. Therefore, divorce had to be eradicated by psychotherapeutic means and by providing support to families in crises (Halem, 1989).

More recently, the U.S. ideology of the family has emphasized personal fulfillment as the main reason for maintaining family relationships, and love as the basis for marriage (Theodorson, 1965). Most people do marry, probably expecting that the promises of this ideology will be fulfilled. But they find themselves pressured into organizing their family life along other (less romantic but more dominant) dimensions. Internal family responsibilities, the demands of formal organizations, gender role stereotypes, social restrictions, and societal prescription regarding family life complicate, and may even preclude, finding personal satisfaction within the family setting (Yorburg, 1973).

Divorce is often the consequence. But people rarely view their divorce in these terms. Social and structural factors are largely invisible to people who must cope with the personal consequences of these factors on a daily basis.

So long as divorce remained a relatively rare phenomenon, affecting only a small proportion of the population, it was accounted for in highly individualistic terms. Having learned that marriage results from being in love with the right person, divorcing people consider themselves or their partners as responsible for marital breakdown. Divorce came to be viewed primarily as a matter of mistaken choice, as only a personal, not a social structural, failure. The language of guilt and innocence, blame and vindication has thus been used as an explanatory framework by the divorcing individuals. The community views divorce similarly, reinforcing the perception that both happy marriages and divorces are functions of mate selection. Therefore, it encourages divorced persons to try again, and to embark on a search for new and more compatible partners (Feldberg & Kohen, 1980).

It was only when divorce became more frequent and visible, and its aftermath affected the lives of a substantial number of children and adults, that people began to appreciate marital breakdown as a social phenomenon, arising out of a particular social context, and affecting the fabric and structure of society. By now it has become abundantly clear to all students of family dissolution that in order to understand the etiology and consequences of divorce, one must keep an open eye and an open mind to divorce as a matter that is both personal and part of a much broader social trend. No individualistic reasons alone and no social reasons alone will provide the complete picture. An understanding of the interaction of these two sets of reasons now seems to be crucial for obtaining a better understanding of the phenomenon of divorce.

DIVORCE STATISTICS

In appraising the extent and trend of divorce we must rely on statistics from governmental agencies such as the National Office of Vital Statistics and the Census Bureau. But these statistics can be misleading. For one, they are incomplete. Only about half of the 50 states submit complete information to the federal government on the numbers and characteristics of the divorces granted within their jurisdictions (e.g., U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990). Divorce statistics can also be difficult to interpret because the rates are calculated in different ways. The most common way of reporting the divorce rate is by calculating the ratio of the number of marriage licenses granted in a given year and the number of divorce decrees. Although this is a very simple and straightforward technique, it is somewhat deceptive. In 1988, for example, there were approximately 2.4 million marriages and 1.2 million divorces. Does this mean that U.S. citizens were almost twice as likely to marry as to divorce in that year? Or does it mean that half of all marriages end in divorce? Although many have assumed that these figures indicate that one in two marriages will end in divorce, we know that most of the divorces in 1988 involved marriages contracted in prior years. Thus, the ratio of number of marriages to number of divorces compares two very different populations. Furthermore, if for whatever reason many people decide not to marry legally, then the calculated divorce rate will show an artificial increase because it is compared to a lower rate of marriages. Finally, this measure may not give a good estimate of the likelihood of first marriages to end in a divorce. Some of the divorce decrees may likely have been issued to people who have been divorced before, and such persons are accounted for in the divorce statistics each time (Sweet & Bumpass, 1988).

A better way to calculate the divorce rate is by the crude rate (i.e., the number of divorces per 1,000 population). The problem with this is that included in “population” are children and adults who are not “divorce potential,” either because they have decided never to marry or cannot divorce, for example because of religious reasons. Another somewhat more refined measure is the number of divorces per 1,000 married women. But the best way to determine the likelihood of a marriage in a given year ending in divorce would be to take a national sample of all marriages in that year, and then to follow them through life until the marriages are dissolved either by divorce or by death. The problem with this approach is that, although it would provide a very accurate statistic, by the time we have it, the statistic may no longer be a good predictor for current marriages.

Following these words of caution, the best statistic available is the crude rate. In 1989, the divorce rate was 4.8 per 1,000 population in the United States (National Center for Health Statistics, 1989). This is slightly less than 4.9 in 1984, which was the same in 1983 and 1982. From the turn of the century until 1964 the divorce rate had been 2.0 or less. In 1946 it more than doubled to 4.3 per 1,000 people, and then sharply declined to prewar rates. From 1958 there was a slow increase, until a rapid surge began in the late 1960s. Divorce rates peaked in 1979 and 1981 at 5.3 per 1,000 population. The 1989 divorce rate was the lowest since 1975 (Hernandez, 1988).

These numbers, however, give only a partial picture of the extent and trend of divorce in the United States. As noted by Leslie and Korman (1985), the reported rates are influenced by the following factors:

1. Divorced people are far more likely to be found in urban than in rural areas. This is partially so because there are fewer divorces in rural areas and because divorced people from rural areas tend to migrate to the city after the divorce.

2. As Glenn and Shelton (1985) reported, divorce rates are highest in the western part of the country and lowest in the northeast. This is partially owing to differences between the regions in people’s average age (lower in the West) and religious beliefs (higher concentration of Catholics in the Northeast).

3. There is an inverse relationship between divorce rates and social class. That is, when education or income are used as indicators for social class, people from lower social classes tend to divorce more than do people from higher social classes.

4. In comparison to the divorce rate of people in their first marriage, the divorce rate among those of previously divorced is twice as high. For those who are married three or more times the rate is even higher. The divorce rate is lowest for remarried widows and widowers.

5. The divorce rate for men who marry in their teens is twice as high as for men who marry in their 20s. The same proportion holds for women who marry at the age of 18 or 19. For women who marry at an even younger age the divorce rate is three times as high as for women who marry in their 20s.

6. The divorce rate is higher in the early years of marriage. Although the first year of marriage is also the peak year of separation, the third year of marriage is the peak year for the number of divorces being granted: “4.4 percent of the divorcing couples had been married less than one year. One-third of divorcing couples (33.7 percent) were married one to four years, and about one-fourth (27.8 percent) were married five to nine years. The remaining third of the divorcing couples had been married ten years or more with 15 percent married ten to fourteen years and 19 percent married fifteen years or more” (Eshleman, 1985, p. 584).

7. Booth, Johnson, and Edwards (1983) reported that people who attend religious services are less likely to divorce, and people who are undergoing very stressful experiences—such as unemployment or death of a child—are more likely to divorce.

But although these points tell us something about whose marriages are more likely to end in divorce, they do no more than give a clue as to why these marriages tend to dissolve. They also tell little about why the overall divorce rate in the early 1990s is so much higher than a few decades ago, and why the overall divorce trend is as described earlier. In order to find some answers to these questions we need to consider a number of broad social structures and trends. We have to examine what has happened to the barriers —legal, economic, religious, and cultural—that have in the past kept many people from dissolving their marriages.

DIVORCE AND THE LAW

No area in which society touches family life has changed as rapidly and dramatically since the 1970s as the legal procedure for dissolving a marriage.

Until 1970, there were legal restrictions and specified grounds for divorce. The legally accepted reasons for breaking up a marriage were adultery, desertion, cruelty, and nonsupport, and these were whether they were true or false. The basic rationale for this was, as noted by Clark (1968):

that marital happiness is best secured by making marriage indissoluble except for very few causes. When the parties know that they are bound together for life, the argument runs, they will resolve their differences and disagreements and make an effort to get along with each other. If they are able to separate legally upon less serious grounds, they will make no such effort, and immorality will result. (pp. 242–243)

In accordance with this rationale, under the old legal system, the legal proceeding needed to be, and indeed was, adversarial. It required that one party should be found guilty of wrongdoing and responsible for the family breakdown. That person was to be punished by the court vis-à-vis the postdivorce financial settlement. This traditional law reflected the social norms and accepted beliefs of the time: Marriage should be a lifelong commitment and that a man and a woman should devote themselves to each other, to their children, and to their home. In time, these assumptions about marriage, divorce, and gender-based division of roles and responsibilities came to be questioned. The public’s growing awareness of the gap between these assumptions and reality brought pressure to bear on lawmakers to reform the divorce laws.

The “divorce revolution” (Weitzman, 1985) began in 1970 when California’s state legislature enacted the no-fault divorce law. The no-fault law conditioned divorce only upon one partner’s assertion that “irreconcilable differences have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage” (Weitzman & Dixon, 1986 p. 345). The underlying assumption reflected in this law was that bad marriages should be dissolved, that economic circumstances should determine alimony and the division of family assets, and that children, where possible, should maintain contact with both parents.

There is no uniform code of divorce law that is applied in all 50 states. However, as of 1988, all states except for South Dakota adopted some variation of no-fault divorce laws (Mintz & Kellogg, 1988). In some states, the divorcing couple must live apart for a certain period of time (from 6 months to 3 years) in order to obtain a legal divorce. In other less conservative states, “incompatibility” or “irreconcilable differences” must be shown by one partner if the other objects to the divorce. In most of these cases the fact that one partner chooses to leave the marriage is considered a sufficient proof of the need to divorce. Moreover, in some states, a divorce decree will be granted if one partner decides, for whatever reasons, that the marriage has reached a point of “irretrievable breakdown” (Halem, 1989; Mintz & Kellogg, 1988).

These reforms in family law appear to have emanated from changes in the larger fabric of society. Social trends and changes such as the women’s movement, women’s greater participation in the labor force, greater sexual freedom, the self-actualization theme of the 1960s and 1970s, and of course the increase in divorce rate, put the pressure on the lawmakers to change divorce statutes so that they might better reflect these social realities. A small part of these realities, which may nevertheless have been a strong motive for liberalizing the divorce law, was the fact that some lawmakers had themselves experienced painful divorces.

However, no-fault is not only a change in a legal code, it represents a cognitive scheme. Not only did it eliminate the need to prove a spouse’s misconduct, but “it eliminated the concept of fault itself” (Weitzman & Dixon, 1986, p. 345). The new law was connected with the trend that took moral issues out of the hands of social and governmental institutions, and promoted individual freedom and equality between men and women. It was also compatible with the rejection of the traditional patriarchal pattern of the family, and with the demand that adult men and women be treated as autonomous and equally responsible for breakdowns in their marriage and for their life after divorce.

Several purposes were to be served by the reform of the divorce law: (a) the elimination of the need for hypocrisy, perjury, and collusion often required by the fault system, (b) the reduction of the levels of bitterness and suffering that are part of the divorce process, and (c) assistance given to reach a fairer and more rational financial settlement.

Weitzman and Dixon (1986) offered the following analysis of the four most important characteristics of the no-fault law:

1. The new law eliminates the “fault-based grounds for divorce.”

No longer does one partner need to file suit against the spouse on grounds such as adultery, mental cruelty, physical abuse, desertion, or other such marital misconduct. The basic premise for “fault” divorces was that there was one “right” and/or “innocent” party and one “wrong” and/or “guilty” party that needed to be punished. By replacing the old system with a single new standard of “irreconcilable differences” there is no longer a need to invent false reasons for divorce. More importantly, the new system recognizes that in marital breakdown, there is no guilty or innocent party. Now as far as the personal relationship between spouses is concerned, the legal process of divorce begins and ends with a “petition for dissolution,” where no justification need be given.

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