230 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
the book, from 1980 to 2000, the main shift was away from bread-
winner-homemaker marriages to what the authors call “egalitar-
ian marriages.” In those marriages, modern husbands and wives
may both have their own jobs and incomes, share decision-making
power more equally and allocate housekeeping and childcare
duties more equitably. This may not be too surprising in view of
the fact that over the past two decades, wives’ contribution to fam-
ily income rose sharply from 21 percent to 32 percent. The Rogers
book studied a nationally representative sample of 1,000 couples.
They found that, on average, couples in “egalitarian marriages”
were happier than couples in traditional marriages.
However you look at it, it is undeniable that the basic structure
of American society, and the individual family structures within
it, are undergoing seismic changes on a massive scale. Modern-
day Americans have an incredible multiplicity of options for pur-
suing their personal and professional lives, and this is coupled
with unprecedented physical mobility. It may logically follow
that new styles of relationships (i.e., still more divorces, followed
by multiple remarriages, cohabitations, etc.) may be an inevitable
outgrowth of all this.
Societal Impact: the Long-term
Implications of Divorce in America
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
—H. L. Mencken
The divorce explosion has dramatically altered the face of our
nation today. The nuclear family, as we once knew it, has been
uprooted. Faith in relationships has been strained, perhaps irre-
vocably. The divorce epidemic has unquestionably fueled the fires
of the battle of the sexes, and that battle has now moved into the
courtrooms and the political process, where issues such as sexual
harassment, domestic violence, and equal pay for equal work are
now at the forefront of our legal and social agendas. So just how
do the social-gain versus social-cost aspects of divorce shake out?
Certainly it can’t be great for society to have large numbers of its
men and women plagued by marital unhappiness, or its children