The Ann Arbor News ran this article last year. I was asked about it again and thought others might be interested in the results.
THE ANN ARBOR NEWS, Wednesday, Mar. 27, 2002
Who Will Divorce?
For answers, U-M researchers tracked 373 couples for 14 years
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
By ANNE RUETER
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Bridesmaid’s dresses, bachelor parties: As the countdown begins for June weddings, couples might not feel in the mood to ponder the fragile state of marriage. Yet the nation’s divorce rate is over 40 percent, although it has been stabilizing or declining during the past two decades, according to the U. S. Census Bureau.
What brings stability to one marriage? What factors make another break up? Race, education level and several dynamics of married life, including a wife’s perception of conflict and a husband’s sense of being affirmed, appear to be key in understanding who is at risk of divorce, says a team of University of Michigan social scientists.
Researchers at the U-M Institute for Social Research will publish their findings next month, based on a 14-year study of 199 white couples and 174 African-American couples who married in 1986.
“There are no top five reasons people get divorced,” says Terri Orbuch, a research scientist at ISR and a sociology professor at Oakland University who headed the team. In the study, partners differ in the stresses they report in their marriages depending on their gender and race.
The study is one of relatively few that look at roughly equal numbers of black and white couples over such a long period.
The 373 couples, who all got marriage licenses in Wayne County in 1986, are a representative sample of couples nationally in terms of income, education and other factors. Researchers tracked the course of the marriages with questionnaires and face-to-face interviews for 14 years.
At last contact, 41 percent of the couples had divorced. The divorce rate for African-American couples in the study was twice the rate for whites.
“(That finding) really highlights for us the disadvantages African-American families have generally,” says Joseph Veroff, ISR researcher and co-investigator in the study.
Couples in the early years of marriage typically cope with multiple pressures: making a home, finding an occupation, raising children. When wives in the study were highly educated, divorce was less likely, the study found.
“There’s something about education that increases the resources available” to deal with challenges in a marriage, Orbuch says.
Similarly, a husband’s higher education level was linked to lasting marriage among white couples. But in African-American couples, the husband’s education level didn’t appear to make a difference in whether the marriage lasted.
Surprisingly, whether a couple in the study had a high or modest household income did not turn out to significantly affect who got divorced.
Person-to-person factors
The researchers also measured marriage dynamics. The couples reported certain ways of interacting in the first 14 years that appear to affect whether their marriages lasted.
The researchers found the risk of divorce was higher when:
Wives reported serious conflict in their marriages (not a hot-button issue for men).
Husbands reported not feeling affirmed by their wives (a husband’s affirmation was not a key factor for women).
Orbuch thinks men and women perceive conflict in their marriages differently.
“The conflict stays on the minds of wives for a longer time … husbands are more able to let go of conflict, sometimes very quickly,” says Orbuch.
It’s hardly surprising news, Veroff says, but the study shows that when couples fight and they do it destructively, their marriage is more likely to end in divorce.
Why did men differ from women in the need for an emotionally supportive partner? Men tend to look for this support within their marriage more than wives, who often rely on close friends and family members, Veroff says.
What about sharing household responsibilities, an issue that divides many couples in the age of two-income families with kids? Orbuch points to an intriguing finding: When African-American husbands do more around the house, African-American couples are less likely to divorce. But in white couples in the study, a husband involved in the household did not lower divorce risk.
Orbuch believes these African-American husbands were meeting clear expectations from their wives.
Among married couples, “African-American women are likely to have more financial resources (than their white counterparts) and expect marriage to be more egalitarian,” she says.
“I think white wives need to expect more, and have more resources.”
Talk isn’t magic
But the health of a rocky marriage doesn’t improve when wives talk a lot to their husbands about their relationship, the study suggests.
Compared to other wives in the study, women who reported discussing the relationship and their feelings were more likely to be in marriages that ended in divorce, says Veroff. He speculates this occurred later in marriage. “We think as a marriage matures, people have talked about issues. They tend to reach an understanding, a common ground. Only when problems arise do you begin to talk about your relationship.”
The findings on predictors for divorce will be published in the April issue of Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Co-authors include U-M researchers Halimah Hassan and Julie Horrocks.
The divorce results are part of a larger “Early Years of Marriage” project at the U-M funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Orbuch’s team has received more than $1 million in federal funds to continue the research for four more years. Person-to-person interviews with all original study members, married and divorced, will begin July 1. One goal is to learn how members of divorced couples explain their breakups, and how they’re coping with divorce.