Posted on 04/11/2026 4:57:35 AM PDT by DoodleBob
Raise your hand if someone close to you – friend, relative, co-worker – has been personally touched by divorce. Sadly, I’ve been able to raise my hand for all three at certain points of my life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you can as well. Perhaps you’ve even been divorced yourself.
The prevalence of divorce in our culture is likely why so few say anything against it. Afraid of stepping on toes, we dance around the topic, telling divorcees that they’re “so brave” for separating from their partner, or that they did the right thing to get out and “find themselves.”
Allow me to say what everyone else is scared to say: Such sweet nothings are plain hogwash. In reality, divorce – particularly the easy, no-fault divorce of which so many couples have taken advantage in the last several decades – is likely at the root of many of the societal ills we are dealing with today, particularly those which affect today’s children – children who will become tomorrow’s adults.
“Divorce introduces instability, confusion, and questions of loyalty into the already complex nature of childhood,” Katy Faust and Stacy Manning write in “Them Before Us.” They go on to mention at least four major issues our culture deals with today that have a logical connection to the prevalence of divorce in American families.
Cancel Culture
Can’t deal with the opinion a friend holds? Cancel him. Can’t maneuver the quirks and disagreements of extended family members? Cut them off. Don’t want to come up with rational arguments for an online debate? Block the account. All these are forms of the cancel culture which has spread across our country like a rash in the last 10 years or so.
But is it possible that cancel culture is so prevalent because many in our society learned from their parents’ example that cancelation is the easiest way to deal with problems?
One child of divorce interviewed for Faust and Manning’s book thinks the answer is yes. She recounts how her father disappeared for several weeks, then returned for a brief time, only to leave again, sitting in the car sobbing as he left his family behind, presumably forced out by his wife. “Mom never acknowledged what her decisions caused,” this woman writes. “We learned ‘cancel culture’ at home, and it’s all we know how to do.”
Healthcare Problems
Many of our wallets took a hit earlier this year when higher insurance costs kicked in. Those same high costs are often what drive people to say that healthcare is a right which the government should provide.
Surprisingly, there may be a connection between the high costs of healthcare and divorce. According to Faust and Manning, “Parental divorce has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and asthma. It’s also been shown to double the likelihood kids will have trouble with their gut, skin, nervous system, genitals, and urinary organs.” Such statistics lead them to conclude, “The correlation between divorced parents and their children’s compromised health are so direct, any serious plan to reduce the cost of healthcare should begin with reducing the divorce rate.”
A novel idea? Yes. But does it make sense? Absolutely. And perhaps the only reason we haven’t acknowledged or thought about this sooner is because too many adults would rather put their own feelings over the physical health and wellbeing of their children.
Falling Test Scores
It’s no secret that American academics are abysmal. According to the most recent Nation’s Report Card, only 35% of 12th-graders are proficient in reading and only 22% are proficient in math. Poor standards and other weak education policies deserve partial blame for such scores, but does home environment impact more than we realize?
“Ask any educator to identify the common factor among kids who struggle in school, and most would agree: It’s a broken home,” Faust and Manning write. “Navigating the transition between two houses, an exhausted single parent, or the merry-go-round of cohabiting parental partners and/or stepfamilies leaves kids with little time or mental energy to memorize multiplication tables.”
Teachers continually say that classroom behavior problems prevent them from teaching. But consider that the instability of broken homes can cause children to act up. Perhaps if we had fewer broken homes, we’d have more orderly classrooms, which in turn would allow teachers to focus on teaching rather than wasting time on discipline, leading to more knowledgeable graduates who can later contribute to the economic and entrepreneurial growth of the nation.
Family Formation
Late last year, Pew Research revealed that only 67% of 12th-graders say they’ll likely choose to get married, down from 80% in 1993. One can only surmise that if these declining marriage rates hold, birthrates will decline also – dangerous territory considering that the “U.S. fertility rate … reached a record low in 2024.”
Researchers have long connected the hesitation to marry and have kids with those whose own parents divorced when they were children. What many may not realize, however, is how high the likelihood of divorce actually is for these kids. Faust and Manning write:
Children of divorce whose parents never remarried are 45 percent more likely to divorce, and those whose divorced parents married stepparents were 91 percent more likely to divorce compared with adults raised in intact biological families. … [O]ne and done ought to be your mantra because the second time is no charm.
If we really want to change culture, then we must confront the uncomfortable realities that are causing problems in that same culture. Just from these few examples alone, it seems divorce is a major root of many of our issues. Is it time we swallow our pride and our own emotional comfort as adults and do away with no-fault divorce?
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Yer not insane or anything. 😆
Addendum… let’s be equitable: there are prolly divorced mothers who initiated the proceedings to trade up for a richer model and told Mary “ah, don’t get married kid…da bastage will take you to the cleaners.”
.
I guess they want to go back to the good old days where your only option was to get him first, and then just tell everyone, "he went out for cigarettes and never came back."
IMHO, the growth of divorce is part of leftist lawfare and BS daytime TV.
Well, it sounds like you made each other miserable in equal measure, and you should be glad it's over.
There are a myriad of reasons why people get divorced. Trying to make two people stay together who don’t want to be together is just going to make them hate each other. They aren’t going to get lovey dovey again. They’ll just be miserable.
Pot and kettle moment: your divorce stat is a BS.
https://divorce.com/blog/divorce-statistics/
https://donperalta.substack.com/p/why-women-initiate-70-of-divorces
It’s more like 65-70%.
As for WHY, reasons include these “home wreckers” being subjected to Infidelity/relationships outside of the marriage (59.6%), Substance abuse/alcohol addiction (34.6%), and Domestic violence (23.5%).
Perhaps you applaud women being a mental and physical punching bag.
No sex holds a monopoly on these matters. But…Please…get your facts straight before going he-man woman hater.
Fair enough.
But, again, this is a parental-driven problem in terms of contemporary divorce. We learned about the sanctity and indissoluble dimension of marriage from our parents. Them little DoodleBobs will learn from me and Mrs. DB.
Also, as a Catholic, I would submit that many new marriages are probably candidates for annulment. Indeed, an exorcist in Nashville, Fr. Dan Rehill, got an annulment after 5 years of marriage.
But married men and women calling the divorce atty after a bump in the road while Mary is 3 years old is immoral.
Bingo. A woman always has enough resources to leave an abuser without a divorce. The women I have known who are abused stay. There is something they enjoy, for lack of a better word, about it.
So which does more damage?
Divorce or living with a physically abusive adulterer?
Yes, divorce is hard on kids. But watching dad beat the snot out of mom isn’t?
BS.
Great post. Thank you.
Annulment is church sanctioned divorce and no less harmful to the kids than a divorce would be.
Scripture tells us that what God has joined together, no man should put asunder and annulment is breaking asunder the marriage.
And all that nonsense about it not being a legitimate marriage is for the birds.
Scripture does NOT ever give any kind of acknowledgement of a not legitimate marriage. That’s just an excuse someone dreamed up to justify church sanctioned divorce.
All we hear is “toxic masculinity”, when the real toxicity is modern feminism.
I’m sorry to hear about your divorce. My son, with two young daughters, just went through one a couple of years ago. Both degreed, white collar jobs, no money problems, no addictions, no abuse, etc. - she just “woke up one day and decided she wasn’t ‘feeling it’ anymore”.
She just destroyed a family unit without a second thought. The only thing they value is “their own happiness”...not that they actually understand how to achieve it. They hear nothing but messaging reinforcing the idea that they “deserve more”.
I’m glad I’m not dating.
homewreckers and baby killers
Statistics tell a different story. Especially since women can't get pregnant by themselves. That's the angle you conveniently ignore.
https://www.issues4life.org/pdfs/news_20231203e.pdf
According to the CDC, 462,355 abortions were recorded among 37 reporting areas by marital status in 2021, revealing that the majority of abortions are, consistent with past reporting, still committed on unmarried women.
In 2021, just 12.7% of women who obtained an abortion were married, while 87.3% were unmarried. And while married women saw an abortion ratio of 41 abortions per 1,000 live births, single unmarried women committed 404 abortions per 1,000 live births, the CDC report stated.
Older abortion data compiled by Guttmacher* for 2014 found that never-married women accounted for the largest proportion of abortions (45.9%) and had an abortion rate of 16.9 per 1000.
“Women cohabiting with but not married to their partners had the highest abortion rate: 31.0 per 1000. Between 2008 and 2014, declines in abortion were most pronounced for cohabitating women (39%) and lowest for married women (21%), although the latter group had a low abortion rate in both periods,” Guttmacher* previously noted.
The data suggests that the sanctity of marriage is a protectant to both the pregnant mother and her preborn baby. It indicates that when men are supportive of the women whom they impregnate, the outcome can have life-saving effects on the unborn child. And, when society promotes abortion as a safety net, which frees men of all their responsibility, babies are left vulnerable to the violence of the predatory abortion industry.
Turns out that men are equally responsible for abortion. Wow! Big news, huh?
I totally agree. My best friend grew up in a situation like that. Mom finally pulled the plug. Its a miracle she turned out normal.
😆
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