Divorce

While I would be surprised if there were a large number of individuals who were married eight times like my great-grandmother, in my work on the novel, I have learned that there were more divorces in the United States than I imagined. Leta and her first husband (my great-grandfather Ralph) divorced in 1922. According to “100 Years of Marriage and Divorce Statistics 1867-1967,” a report from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 10-15% of married couples divorced in the period between 1916 and 1925. This was also the era when it became more possible for couples to obtain a divorce without proving significant cause of abuse, adultery, or abandonment.

Leta’s other documented divorces occurred in 1929, 1932 and 1952. In those years, the divorce rates were, respectively, 16%, 16% and 25%. There was a spike in the divorce rate in 1946 after the conclusion of World War II, when many who married before and during the war realized that perhaps they had selected a poor partner. Also, the number of divorces was higher in the 1940s than in the 1950s, partly I suspect, due to the rise of the “American ideal” of marriage and family that occurred during the 1950s and the resubjugation of women.

The report notes that during the Depression (1929-1939), the divorce rate ceased to trend upward. Due to the high rate of unemployment, many couples stayed together for financial reasons. Once employment rates began to rise in the late 1930s, however, so did the number of divorces.

All through this time, however, the spouse filing for divorce still had to show that her/his partner was either cruel or adulterous. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a person could cite irreconcilable differences as a reason for divorce, which suddenly made divorce much easier to obtain. Divorce rates skyrocketed.

According to http://www.divorcestatistics.info, various studies on U.S. rate of divorce show significant differences when a comparison is made in first, second and third marriage terminations. Based on more recent examples, the divorce rate for first marriage is 41% to 50%, the rate after second marriage is from 60% to 67% and the rate for third marriage divorces is from 73% to 74%. Reports also show that couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce as compared to couples without children.

I do want to point out that these are national averages. Some of the reports I’ve seen that break down information by state seem to show that Ohio (where my great-grandmother lived her entire life) is firmly in the middle, neither on the high end or the low end when it comes to divorces.