{"id":2829,"date":"2006-10-18T14:13:08","date_gmt":"2006-10-18T21:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/18\/divorce-rates-from-1860-to-the-present\/"},"modified":"2006-10-18T14:13:08","modified_gmt":"2006-10-18T21:13:08","slug":"divorce-rates-from-1860-to-the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2829","title":{"rendered":"Divorce Rates From 1860 To The Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think this graph, from an upcoming paper in The Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/em> ((“Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces,” by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, The Journal of Economic Perspectives<\/em>, Winter 2007. Pdf link<\/a> to paper.)), is interesting.<\/p>\n

\"Divorce<\/p>\n

There’s a “sky is falling” mentality among many so-called marriage advocates. According to their storyline, marriage in America had a golden past until the culturally permissive 60s and 70s, during which drug addicted and probably communistic social scientists convinced legislators to pass no-fault divorce laws, after which divorce rates shot up as parents abandoned their tow-headed big-eyed children to go inhale the demon weed with Abbie Hoffman while having loose and quite possibly lesbian sex with Janis Joplin on top of a LSD-themed painted car while hairy-legged feminists kick men out of the home creating the fatherlessness crisis which has led to the trifecta of evil: skyrocketing divorce rates, Janet Jackson’s nipple ring, hip-hop music.<\/p>\n

I never hear any of the divorce chicken littles talk about divorce in non-apocalyptic terms; in their narrative, things are always getting worse. But it’s not the sky that’s been falling since the 1970s – it’s the divorce rate. And to blame divorce on gay marriage – when divorce has been dropping like George Bush’s approval ratings for as long as same-sex marriage has been on the national agenda – is lunacy. On the other hand, marriage rates have <\/em>been falling.<\/p>\n

The dotted lines on the graph show where the century-old divorce trend would have been if not for the recent rise and fall. The question is, will divorce rates return to their long-established slow rise, or will the current fall in divorce rates continue? ((Or it could always level out, I guess, or do any number of inbetween choices.))<\/p>\n

More on divorce in future posts – including a post on that most unjustly framed institution, no-fault divorce. No-fault didn’t cause rising divorce rates in the 60s and 70s; if anything, it was the other way around. Plus, the rise of one great American institution and the fall of another: birth control and shotgun marriages. Woot!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think this graph, from an upcoming paper in The Journal of Economic Perspectives ((“Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces,” by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2007. Pdf link to paper.)), is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-families-structures-divorce-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}