Celebrating peak divorce

The Economist published one of its strong social surveys a couple of weeks ago on the subject of marriage. It was, as always, very insightful. And it was also uplifting. Humanity is making progress, often despite roadblocks imposed by religions and my generations of politicians.

Perhaps the most positive takeaway for me was the revelation that divorce in the developed world peaked about twenty years ago and has been declining since, even though divorce is more freely available than ever and carries less stigma than before. The trend is especially strong among more educated people. Since divorce inevitably leads to feelings of shame and challenges for children, this is a wonderful cause for celebration, and worthy of trying to understand its root causes.

The answer lies, I think, in the many cultural changes in society came about over time, during the second half of the twentieth century. Go back to 1950. Most people went to Church and heard strict lectures about marriage being a commitment for life in front of God. They also heard that sex belonged only in marriage and that children born out of wedlock were somehow sinners and inferior human beings.

Parents and grand parents added to the social drumbeat. Familial shame would come from any family member “living in sin”. The purpose of girls was to marry and have babies, and any unmarried girl over thirty was “on the shelf”. Girls were told to protect their virginity at all costs, while boys were advised to discretely “sow their oats”. Couples met at staged managed events like community dances, where parents could cast an eye over proceedings and social classes were segregated.

In the developed world, all of this had changed completely by 2000, outside of the most religious enclaves. And, with all respect to my fellow churchgoers who interpret scripture differently, thank God for that. But these changes, and others, crept in at different speeds. And one consequence was a temporary increase in divorce.

Perhaps the first key trend was the involvement of women in the workforce and greater emancipation in female education. A generation grew up with expectations beyond marriage, and the opportunity to pursue more dreams. This reduced the impact and control of parents, and led youngsters to fall in love, and also married people to fall into affairs and to question imperfect marriages.

So during this stage, many couples had still married young, to partners they barely knew and had not slept with, but then experienced the flaws in this model and the temptations of escaping from it. It is no surprise that many of these marriages collapsed. Divorce was becoming more widely available, and, while still socially damaging, was chosen by more and more couples.

By the 1990’s, a third or more marriages were ending in divorce. Traditionalists cited this statistic as likely to rise further, and cause to roll back the societal changes and double down on expectations about marriage being for life.

But this story has a happy ending. For other trends were feeding in to solve many of the challenges from the first set of changes. Most important, couples started living with each other for a time before commitment. Availability of contraception was crucial to this change. Also, more people in their twenties of both genders were pursuing education and career and living away from the influence of parents.

Not surprisingly, couples given a proper chance to get to know each other made better decisions about marriage. Compatibility came with maturity and the time for a relationship to move beyond infatuation. Two other less positive trends contributed as well. Housing became more expensive, and weddings became more expensive too.

All this led to marriages happening later, but becoming more robust. Divorce rates started to go down, and have been falling ever since. Even better, surveys suggest that this generation is less tolerant of affairs and less tempted by them.

The general lesson is to be patient while major trends are playing out. Key indicators, such as divorce, may initially trend in the wrong direction, but if trends work themselves through and society finds fixes for flaws in the new models, things can work themselves out.

The Economist pointed out that the positive trends about divorce, teenage pregnancy and lone parenthood, were strongest among those with higher education, but that other groups were making progress too. More concerning, the trends in marriage were leading people to marry more within their own social class, entrenching inequality of wealth and opportunity. The logical policy response to this would be to promote universal education and to limit opportunities to hoard wealth (for example via estate taxes and removing tax advantages for private education).

Typically, The Economist survey did not restrict itself to the developed world. Long sections looked at India and China. In India, the article concluded that the same traditions that had hampered social progress in the developed world were even stronger in India, but saw encouraging signs that these were breaking down quickly.

In China, most interesting was an effect of the gender imbalance caused by the availability of selective abortion and the one-child policy. In China, dowries work in reverse, with the groom’s family paying the family of the bride. In some parts, girls seen as good prospects have become so scarce that the going rate for such dowries had exploded upwards. The article concluded that families that resisted the urge to abort daughters were having the last laugh. I would also add that this may be another example of showing the patience to allow trends to work through fully. The market should send the signal to the next generation that girls are as worthy as boys.

After reading the survey, I was left wondering what the next major trends would be for marriage, and how 2070 might look compared with 2020. One clue was offered. Civil partnerships came into being as a compromise made available to gay couples before marriage became legal for them. But now several couples, gay and straight, are choosing a civil partnership in preference to a marriage, as something with less ceremony and without its religious overtones.

Building on this, I wonder if this could be a route to challenging the next taboo of marriage, that it is an agreement for life. We make few other commitments for life – imagine for example if we committed to a career or profession for life, with no way out? Business partnerships form and dissolve easily. True, parenthood is a lifetime commitment, but society has found ways for people to be good parents outside marriage, and for kids to be protected. I would argue that our own kids actually benefit from having four parents instead of two.

So how about the concept of marriage, or civil partnership, as a renewable contract? Upcoming renewals would allow couples to review what was working and what not, and create an improved renewal or a sensible dissolution. A lower initial commitment would be less intimidating. Divorce could be further destigmatised, and people released from unhappy bonds. Separation followed by later reconciliation on a stronger basis would also become more common.

I would offer five, ten and twenty year options. The shorter option would be preferred for younger couples and those who had not lived together a long time. A ten-year option would suit a couple that had lived together a long time and were ready for kids. The longer option would suit those already together a long time. A typical path could be a five, then two tens, then twenties.

I should point out that a lifetime commitment suits me personally very well – at my age twenty years and life don’t seem all that different, which is fine by me and would be for most of us with plenty of life experience. But I think my idea has merit for most. There would be uproar in the church – but if we took too much notice of that, we would still be living with the norms of the 1950’s. I am pleased that my own children don’t have those burdens.