DIVORCEfamily members, as other life-course transitions
(remarriage, childbirth, and retirement). The so-
ciological interest in divorce also focuses on the
social trends it is part of, figuring prominently in
any sociological analysis of industrialization, pov-
erty rates, educational attainment, strategies of
conflict resolution, or law.
For sociologists, divorce may characterize an
individual, a family, a region, a subgroup, a histori-
cal period, or an entire society. It may be studied as
either the cause or consequence of other phe-
nomena. Still, the overriding concern of almost all
research on this topic has been the increase in
divorce over time. Divorce is now almost as com-
mon as its absence in the lives of recently married
couples. The National Center for Health Statistics
estimates that 43 percent of marriages begun in
the early 1990s will end in divorce (NCHS 1998), a
significant decline from the estimates of 50 per-
cent to 65 percent in the late 1980s (Martin and
Bumpass 1989). The decline in divorce rates in the
recent past is probably a result of the aging of the
post-World War II Baby Boom generation who are
no longer at high risk of divorce because of their
age. It is also possible that American marriages are
becoming somewhat more stable than they were a
decade ago. Still, the fluctuations in divorce rates
one decade to the next do not mask the more
general trend for the past two centuries. Under-
standing the increase in divorce has been the
larger sociological endeavor regardless of the par-
ticular perspective employed. A historical account
of trends is necessary before considering contem-
porary issues associated with divorce.
A BRIEF HISTORICAL RECORD OF
DIVORCE IN AMERICAThe Colonial Period. Divorce was not legal in any
but the New England settlements. The Church of
England allowed for legal separations (a mensa et
thoro), but not for divorce. The New England
Puritans who first landed at Plymouth in 1621,
however, were disenchanted with this, as well as
many other Anglican doctrines. Divorce was per-
mitted on the grounds of adultery or seven-year
desertion as early as 1639 in Plymouth. Other New
England colonies followed similar guidelines. Di-
vorce governed by rudimentary codified law was
granted by legislative decree. Individual petitions
for divorce were debated in colonial legislatures
and were effected by bills to dissolve a particular
marriage. Still, though legal, divorce was very rare.
During the seventeenth century, there were fifty-
four petitions for divorce in Massachusetts, of
which forty-four were successful (Phillips 1988, p.
138). The middle colonies provided annulments
or divorces for serious matrimonial offenses such
as prolonged absence or bigamy. The southern
colonies afforded no provisions for divorce
whatsoever.Post-Revolutionary War. Immediately after
the Revolutionary War, without British legal im-
pediments to divorce, the states began discussion
of laws to govern divorce. In New England and the
middle states, divorce became the province of
state courts while in the more restrictive southern
states it was more often a legislative matter. By the
turn of the nineteenth century, almost all states
had enacted some form of divorce law. And by the
middle of the century, even southern states were
operating within a judicial divorce system.The shift to judicial divorce is significant. By
removing divorce deliberations from legislatures,
states were forced to establish grounds that justi-
fied a divorce. Such clauses reflected the prevail-
ing sentiments governing normative marriage—
they indicated what was expected of marriage at
the time. And by investing judges with the authori-
ty to interpret and adjudicate, such changes signifi-
cantly liberalized the availability of divorce. North-
ern and southern states permitted divorces for
specific offenses such as adultery, desertion, biga-
my, and increasingly with time, cruelty. In the
newer frontier western states, grounds resembled
those of the East plus ‘‘any other cause for which
the court shall deem it proper that the divorce
shall be granted’’ (Phillips 1988, p. 453).Throughout the nineteenth century, there was a
gradual liberalization of divorce laws in the United
States and a corresponding increase in divorce as
well. Where divorces totaled a few hundred at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the numbers
grew exponentially as the century wore on; 7,380
divorces in 1860, 10,962 in 1870, 19,663 in 1880,
33,461 in 1890, and 55,751 in 1900 (U.S. Bureau of
the Census 1975). These figures assume greater
significance when growth in population is removed
from them. Whereas the divorce rate (number of
divorces per 1,000 marriages) was but 1.2 in 1869,
it had climbed to 4.0 by 1900. In short, the increase