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Divorce culture report

July 13th, 2011

by Sheila Liaugminas

The subject is finally getting mainstreamed. It took a whole generation suffering the ravages of family strife for it to make its way into the public conversation. Probably because the children who suffered most are now adults, in the media and the arts.

It’s come up on my radio show time and again, and I was planning to take closer look at the subject in the next week or so. This WSJ cover story on a section of the weekend edition really caught my attention.

Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: “Where were you on D-Day?” For baby boomers, the questions are: “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” or “What were you doing when Nixon resigned?”

For much of my generation—Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980—there is only one question: “When did your parents get divorced?” Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.

How sad. Keep reading the piece. It’s wrenching.

Growing up, my brother and I were often left to our own devices, members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 1970s and ’80s. Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers’ houses during the week to their fathers’ apartments every other weekend.

“Whatever happens, we’re never going to get divorced.” Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s—in other words, our parents’ marriages.

Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We’re also marrying later in life, if at all.

And there’s the key. Yes, they have learned and have committed themselves to not repeating the devastating, destructive behavior their parents didn’t try hard enough to avoid. But they’re also postponing marriage, delaying it much later, if they marry at all. Which is a whole other demographic problem for society. Co-habiting is the norm, whether it eventually winds up in marriage or not.

Keep reading.

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