16 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
There have always been obvious high-risk candidates for early
divorce (i.e., couples who married too young, those with finan-
cial problems that crippled the marriage, etc.). However, a recent
survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers indi-
cated that divorce attorneys nationwide are handling an increas-
ing number of divorces among people age sixty and over. This
would appear to be a particularly frightening indicator—when
even the supposedly stable element of our society starts “split-
ting the sheets.”
One response to the horrendous divorce rate during the cynical
period of the late 1970s was a predictable decline in the marriage
rate. But we have all heard Dr. Johnson’s sarcastic definition of
marriage as representing the “triumph of hope over experience,”
and for at least a while there, hope appeared to have triumphed
once again—when the marriage rate rose slightly in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. Then, true to the cyclical nature of these things,
it has begun to drop off again as we have entered the twenty-first
century.
Can we quantify the post-divorce fall out? Post-divorce follow-up
studies have shown how bad the nasty emotional flak can be for
divorcing couples and their kids. At least one-half of all divorc-
ing parents remain fanatically angry at one another more than a
decade following their divorce.
Various studies report that in approximately half of all divorce
cases both spouses indicated they had indeed “wanted” the divorce.
It appears to be the women, however, who seem to be more
inclined to actually act on their instincts. It is the woman who
initiates the actual legal divorce proceedings in approximately
two-thirds of all divorce cases filed nationwide.
The statistics on severe depression as an outgrowth of divorce
are saddening though hardly surprising. Over one-third of the
men and three-fifths of the women were mildly to moderately
depressed following separation. Another 30 percent of both men
and women were diagnosed as severely or acutely depressed
after separation.
What about the impact on kids? Only about one-half of all Ameri-
can children now live in traditional nuclear families (i.e., with
both biological parents still present). Another 15 percent or so