The purpose of this paper is to delineate and describe some basic facts about divorce which counselors need to know. The topics covered include factors that put marriages at risk, what divorcing parents need to know about the effects of divorce, and factors that are important in the process of remarriage and stepparenting.
Prevalence of Divorce and Factors That Put Marriages At Risk
The United States has one of the highest divorce rates in the world with more than 1 million divorces occurring annually (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989). Most people get divorced in young adulthood, with the Bureau of Census stating that the peak time for divorce is about seven years into a marriage. Ketcham (1990) explains these types of divorce as arising from the "seven year itch."
In other words, there is a period, after about seven years of marriage, where one of both spouses feel that they need to separate from one another and try something different. However, Uhlenberg, Cooney & Boyd (1990) note that while middle-aged people are less likely to divorce than younger couples, the divorce rate has risen even for this group with about one woman in eight ending up divorced after she reaches the age of forty.
What factors place marriages at risk for divorce? Although there are societal factors that place marriages at risk (e.g. fewer legal obstacles to divorce, less social stigma regarding it, fact that more couples chose to remain childless, etc.), surveys of married couples tend to show that both young and middle-aged people divorce for the same reasons--greater expectations for marriage than what they actually realized, and a growing willingness to end an unsatisfactory relationship; other important factors which, if not present, can lead to divorce include: strength of partners commitment, degree to which each spouse likes the other as a person, and degree to which the other stimulates the person emotionally and intellectually (...