Posted on 11/27/2018 12:52:36 PM PST by Drew68
Have you heard that statistic that half of all marriages will end in divorce? It’s wrong. Even if that many marriages ever did disintegrate at one point, they don’t now. Divorce is on the decline and has been since the 1980s in America (when that 50% divorce statistic took hold). Experts now put your chances of uncoupling at about 39% in the U.S. This sounds like such promising news. Families are sticking together! But in practice, this does not mean more people are living happily ever after.
Census figures released on Nov. 14 show that the median age at first marriage in the U.S. is now nearly 30 for men and 28 for women, up from 27 and 25 in 2003. This does not mean that Millennials have stopped living with someone they fancy, though. Cohabiting is becoming a norm in most Westernized countries. In 2018, 15% of folks ages 25 to 34 lived with an unmarried partner, up from 12% a decade earlier. More Americans under 25 cohabit with a partner (9%) than are married to one (7%). Two decades ago, those figures weren’t even close: 5% were cohabiting and 14% were married.
The drop in divorce statistics seems to be, in large part, due to the much-maligned Millennials making their marital vows stick far more often. One recent study says that, compared to their 2008 counterparts, young people in 2016 were 18% less likely to get divorced. That study has not been peer-reviewed but is echoed by the trend in the U.K., which keeps much more robust divorce data. Young Brits’ marriages are 27% more likely to make it through their first decade — the prime divorcing years — than those who got hitched in the ’80s.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
From Dr. Thomas Sowell
The fact that there may be half as many divorces in a given year as there are marriages in that year does not mean that half of all marriages end in divorce.
It is completely misleading to compare all the divorces in one year — from marriages begun years and even decades earlier — with the number of marriages begun in that one year.
Why these desperate twistings of words and numbers by the left, in order to discredit marriage?
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell020607.php3
The divorce rate is meaningless by itself. If people aren’t getting married, they can’t get divorced.
Another problem with it was that part of the data came from a faulty reading of multiple surveys asking someone if they were married, then years later asking the same person if they were married. If someone answered "yes" the first time and "no" the second time they were counted as divorced, even if in truth they were widowed. So again, the 50% rate wasn't accurate.
One last point, not in this article but often brought up when someone brings up the old 50% divorced "statistic". How many of my fellow Christians here on FR have heard how sad it is that almost 50% of Christians wind up divorced too? I've heard it many times. And it's true (dismissing the flaws already pointed out in the 50% anyway), but only if you determine who the Christians are by asking a simple survey question like "what religion are you". Back in the 1980's a lot more people were willing to say they were Christian even if they thought about Jesus only every now and then. (Unlike today where someone like that would more probably say they weren't a Christian.) But if you included church attendance (again, back on the 1980's data) and identify the Christians as the ones who attended church regularly (not a true reading of being a real Christian, but perhaps the best way to quantify the unquantifiable), then the divorce rate dropped by a third.
With so many fewer marrying, I’d imagine many divorces are avoided when the couples don’t make it to their wedding day to start with.
“The divorce rate is meaningless by itself. If people aren’t getting married, they can’t get divorced.”
Exactly. I know of many folks in their 30s who haven’t married, even ones living with partners with whom they have children.
I have 15 nephews and nieces all married with children and only one divorced and re-married. He was career military and spent too much time on far away assignments.
‘Living in sin. Shacking up.;
horrible...they should all be stoned to death at the first available opportunity...
‘Will Gus keep his job after the beat down from Bama?’
he should; Tigers didn’t play all that bad against Bama...
52 to 21.
Auburn was doing good...until they got blown away. Kinda like my ex-mother-in-law doesn't look fat...if all you're looking at is her pinky finger. :)
Kirby will have a game plan for Tua, though. Remember in 2008 when the Florida Tebows beat Bama in the SEC Championship? Remember Bama owning Tebow the next year? Kirby and Saban later admitted they had been preparing for Florida off and on during the off season, even though Florida wasn't on the schedule. I don't expect Georgia to be surprised by Tua again. Bama will have to win it the old school way.
I’ve had quite enough of the ‘cycle of divorce’.
Going off of my family, my grandparents have 12 kids, that have ~50 kids of their own (my cousins).
Two uncles have gotten divorced.
One uncle’s a priest.
One aunt has two kids, never married.
I don’t think any of the cousins have gotten divorced, though I’m one of the oldest at 29. No major issues that I know of yet.
I have always thought that the “50% of all marriages end in divorce” is bogus. I always hear “50%”, I never hear 46% or 52.1%. One persons says 50% and the whole news media repeats it over and over again.
“...because “disadvantaged people” are less likely to get married and to enjoy the advantages of marriage”
What kind of CRAP is that? I thought marriage was ENSLAVEMENT of women, at least according the Feminists.
Despite what the media says, America remains an nation of married folks. Using the IRS’ SOI data, 54 million filers in 2014 out of 149 million filers were Married filing jointly, with about 29 million being married filing single. That’s a whole lot of married people.
The divorce rate is not 50% - this is one of the most abused statistics out there...the divorce rate is NOT the quotient of annual marriages and divorces...the divorce rate is #of annual divorces divided by number of marriages at the beginning of the year.
While the 2014 divorce total of 814k excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, and Minnesota, let’s be conservative and gross up 814k by 20%/close to the percentage of electoral votes those states represent...about one million divorces versus about 68.5 million marriages (54 million married filing jointly couples plus 29/2 million married filing single) is 1.5% divorce rate. BOOM!
I bet the numbers in Europe are worse...they are shacking up much more...and their continent is crumbling.
No, the NUMERIC TRUTH is Americans love marriage, love the institution of marriage, and the shacking up thing is not as well-loved (though it isn popular). Hell, even Candice Bergen agreed with the VP.
The 50% figure was a projection, and included the multiple-marrieds in its base. Even then it was never actually true.
Still too high.
And if you're going to use "perpetuation of inequality" as your metric for why an increase in socially responsible behavior is bad, you can toss any dysfunction into the mix and get the same results:
Americans Are Saving More Money. That May Not Actually Be Good News (disadvantaged people continue to waste money on booze, lottery tickets, and rimz for their hoopties, perpetuating inequality).
And on and on.
I have read that the success rate of couples who go to church on Sunday and practice natural family planning/spacing is 96%. How many people value marriage, family and faith that much? I guess not nearly enough.
TIME, barf.
Not been easy at times but you tough it out if at all possible and you'll find that rarely are differences "irreconcilable"
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