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The facts and the myths..



 
 
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Old September 15th 05, 02:45 AM
Dusty
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Default The facts and the myths..

http://health.discovery.com/centers/...s/divorce.html

Debunking Divorce Myths
By David Popenoe

Fact: Divorce rates are rising.
Fact: Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.

Fact: There are ten myths of divorce.

Divorce Myth 1: Because people learn from their bad experiences, second
marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages.

Fact: Although many people who divorce have successful subsequent marriages,
the divorce rate of remarriages is in fact higher than that of first
marriages.

Divorce Myth 2: Living together before marriage is a good way to reduce the
chances of eventually divorcing.

Fact: Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage
have a considerably higher chance of eventually divorcing. The reasons for
this are not well understood. In part, the type of people who are willing to
cohabit may also be those who are more willing to divorce. There is some
evidence that the act of cohabitation itself generates attitudes in people
that are more conducive to divorce, for example the attitude that
relationships are temporary and easily can be ended.

Divorce Myth 3: Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are
affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the
children recover relatively quickly.

Fact: Divorce increases the risk of interpersonal problems in children.
There is evidence, both from small qualitative studies and from large-scale,
long-term empirical studies, that many of these problems are long lasting.
In fact, they may even become worse in adulthood.

Divorce Myth 4: Having a child together will help a couple to improve their
marital satisfaction and prevent a divorce.

Fact: Many studies have shown that the most stressful time in a marriage is
after the first child is born. Couples who have a child together have a
slightly decreased risk of divorce compared to couples without children, but
the decreased risk is far less than it used to be when parents with marital
problems were more likely to stay together "for the sake of the children."

Divorce Myth 5: Following divorce, the woman's standard of living plummets
by 73 percent while that of the man's improves by 42 percent.

Fact: This dramatic inequity, one of the most widely publicized statistics
from the social sciences, was later found to be based on a faulty
calculation. A reanalysis of the data determined that the woman's loss was
27 percent while the man's gain was 10 percent. Irrespective of the
magnitude of the differences, the gender gap is real and seems not to have
narrowed much in recent decades.

Divorce Myth 6: When parents don't get along, children are better off if
their parents divorce than if they stay together.

Fact: A recent large-scale, long-term study suggests otherwise. While it
found that parents' marital unhappiness and discord have a broad negative
impact on virtually every dimension of their children's well-being, so does
the fact of going through a divorce. In examining the negative impacts on
children more closely, the study discovered that it was only the children in
very high-conflict homes who benefited from the conflict removal that
divorce may bring. In lower-conflict marriages that end in divorce - and the
study found that perhaps as many as two thirds of the divorces were of this
type - the situation of the children was made much worse following a
divorce. Based on the findings of this study, therefore, except in the
minority of high-conflict marriages it is better for the children if their
parents stay together and work out their problems than if they divorce.

Divorce Myth 7: Because they are more cautious in entering marital
relationships and also have a strong determination to avoid the possibility
of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have as
much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.

Fact: Marriages of the children of divorce actually have a much higher rate
of divorce than the marriages of children from intact families. A major
reason for this, according to a recent study, is that children learn about
marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents. In the children
of divorce, the sense of commitment to a lifelong marriage has been
undermined.

Divorce Myth 8: Following divorce, the children involved are better off in
stepfamilies than in single-parent families.

Fact: The evidence suggests that stepfamilies are no improvement over
single-parent families, even though typically income levels are higher and
there is a father figure in the home. Stepfamilies tend to have their own
set of problems, including interpersonal conflicts with new parent figures
and a very high risk of family breakup.

Divorce Myth 9: Being very unhappy at certain points in a marriage is a good
sign that the marriage will eventually end in divorce.

Fact: All marriages have their ups and downs. Recent research using a large
national sample found that 86 percent of people who were unhappily married
in the late 1980s, and stayed with the marriage, indicated when interviewed
five years later that they were happier. Indeed, three fifths of the
formerly unhappily married couples rated their marriages as either "very
happy" or "quite happy."

Divorce Myth 10: It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings.

Fact: Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. One recent study
found that many of the reasons for this have to do with the nature of our
divorce laws. For example, in most states women have a good chance of
receiving custody of their children. Because women more strongly want to
keep their children with them, in states where there is a presumption of
shared custody with the husband the percentage of women who initiate
divorces is much lower. Also, the higher rate of women initiators is
probably due to the fact that men are more likely to be "badly behaved."
Husbands, for example, are more likely than wives to have problems with
drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
I submit that an individual who breaks a
law that conscience tells him is unjust,
and who willingly accepts the penalty of
imprisonment in order to arouse the
conscience of the community over its
injustice, is in reality expressing the
highest respect for the law.


- Martin Luther King Jr. -


 




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