Cohabitation / Divorce / Observations
(09/01/02)

The Sacrament of Marriage is taking a bashing in our society. A recent study by the Center for Disease Control supports what most people have suspected was happening. In what was called “the most detailed look at cohabitation, marriage, and divorce ever produced” a discouraging picture emerges. Yet, the picture for more religious persons is not as bad as for the non-religious. Here are some notes gleaned from the study of over 11,000 women in 1995, the last year complete statistics are available.

Cohabitation.

Couples are more likely to live together without marriage. Half of the women studied had lived with a partner by the time they reached 30 years of age.

Of those who lived together for at least 5 years, 70 percent eventually married the live-in partner.

But, after 10 years of marriage, 40 percent of these couples who lived together before marriage broke up. (This study compares favorably with more recent studies that show 50% of these couples break up later.)

Couples who choose to live together tend to be younger, less religious, or have other factors that place them at greater risk for divorce, according to some psychologists.

The reason I hear most often from couples who prepare for marriage after having lived together is that they want to be sure. They do not want to make the same mistake made by others around them who have divorced . Many of these young people say that they are so serious about marriage that they do not want to enter it without being sure. Unfortunately for them, another attitude comes with that reasoning: If it doesn’t work out, we can split up and it’s no big loss because we don’t have a legal or church commitment. What little commitment is present is very tenuous, often not able to survive any test. That attitude most often carries over into a subsequent marriage with predictable results, hence the higher divorce rates among those who lived together before getting married.

Divorce.

If divorce statistics for those who cohabitated are bothersome, the divorce statistics for those who “waited” are only a little less so. Fully 31% of those couples were divorced after 10 years.

Blacks are most likely to divorce, Asians are least likely to divorce, whites and Hispanics are in between. I suspect that means that our parishioners fit the middle ground.

The younger a person is, the greater the risk of subsequent divorce. Nearly half of those who marry under 18 and 40% of those under 20 get divorced. After age 24, the rate drops to 24 percent. It seems that age does bring maturity. Most younger people focus on the here-and-now so much that they miss the longer view. “If it isn’t working now,” they think, “it never will.” Older persons know that things change in relationships and put in the extra time and effort.

Non-religious persons, that is, people who do not affiliate with a religious group, have a 41% percent divorce rate after 10 years.  I don’t find this surprising because all religions favor marriage and the stability involved.

The effect of parents’ divorce on their children is very evident. Women whose parents were divorced themselves divorced at a rate of 43 percent after 10 years. Those whose parents did not divorce had a rate of 29 percent. It seems that conflict resolution styles are copied by one’s offspring.

Children also influence divorce rates. Fifty percent of women who had children before the marriage were divorced in 10 years. Nearly as many couples who had no children were divorced in 10 years. I suspect the reason for this might be that the added strain of entering marriage with a child already present can be tough on a person who had none. And, in the other case, not having children could be so devastating for one or the other partner that the person leaves the relationship. Perhaps there were no children because of other problems preexisting in the marriages.

After divorce, just over half of the women got remarried in the next 5 years. This is a big drop from the 1950s when 65 percent of divorced women remarried.

Some Observations.

Marriage is an institution which has been exercised in various ways throughout history and across cultures. Monogamy is not practiced in all countries or in all religions. Divorce is permitted in many cultures and faiths. Marriage among Catholics stands as a sign of contradiction in today’s society. I find it very sad that we have been infected by the attitudes of the society around us, but that is the way it has always been. Jesus contradicted the divorce regulations of the Pharisees. The early Church preached marriage in ways that differed from Roman society. We do the same today.

Following the teaching of Jesus, we believe that living together without marriage is sinful. We believe that the commitment to another person in marriage is a sacred covenant which demands fidelity. We believe that divorce is harmful and breaks the covenant. We also believe that sometimes the qualities need for a marriage were not present at the time of the wedding, that these were never sacramental marriages in the first place, and that they can be annulled. Even the annulment process begins with the sacredness of marriage.

I write all this because we need to be aware of these facts. Our task as believers is to live out in our lives the reality and truth of the Gospels. It was never intended to be easy. It was intended, I believe, to be life-giving, something that is very often a work of self-sacrifice.

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