divorce moral issue essay

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

The Morality of Getting Divorced

Justin mcbrayer considers when divorce is morally permissable, and when it isn’t..

It’s almost impossible to find someone whose life has not been significantly affected by divorce. Given this, the decision to end a marriage may be one of the most significant moral decisions a person ever makes. So under what conditions is it morally permissible to get a divorce?

To say that something is morally permissible means that there is no moral obligation requiring you to act differently. So getting divorced will be morally permissible only if you can do so while meeting all your moral obligations. So what are the moral obligations that might make ending a marriage morally problematic?

What Makes Marriage Morally Special?

Many ethicists agree that getting married generates special moral obligations that one would not otherwise have. It makes some actions required that would otherwise not be, for example, sacrificing something for your partner’s sake, and makes some actions wrong that would otherwise not be, for example, having sex with a non-partner. But what explains the fact that when two people marry, new moral obligations are created?

Marriage creates moral obligations primarily because it involves promise-making. Promise-making is a way of generating moral obligations – if I promise to pick you up at the airport, then I have taken on a moral obligation to do so. And whatever else a wedding ceremony may be, it is an event during which two people make promises to one another. It follows that getting married is a way of generating new moral obligations.

Some ethicists resist this line of thought. They insist that marriage promises have no power to create new moral obligations. According to these philosophers, this is because marital vows are promises to feel a certain way or to have certain emotions towards one’s partner, but we have no control over our feelings or emotions, and it makes no sense to say that someone is morally obligated to do something that is beyond her control. Thus, promising to do something the doing of which one cannot control does not result in a new moral obligation.

There are at least two good reasons to reject this analysis. First, it is plausible that in the marriage context we are promising to do things that are in our control or over which we have indirect control. For example, when we get married we pledge to do our best to bring about a certain emotional state, or make an unconditional commitment to another person. Second, and more importantly, anyone who has been to a wedding can see that although there are often emotional components to marital vows, there are obvious behavioral components as well. In fact, most of us see getting married as a promise to do something for our partner. Consider the following wedding vow, taken at random from an online search:

“I, [name], take you, [name], to be my [husband/wife], my constant friend, my faithful partner and my love from this day forward. In the presence of God, our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow. I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals, to honor and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live.”

Notice how heavily this vow focuses on actions compared to emotions: support one’s partner, honor one’s partner, respect one’s partner, and so on. Even the emotional content is easily understood in a behavioral sense: to be a faithful partner in sickness and health clearly has a behavioral component. To see this, imagine the following thought-experiment. Suppose Landon makes the aforementioned promise to Hannah. Suppose next that he feels all the right things toward her (for example, he is in love with her), but that his behavior is wildly erratic – he sleeps around, is verbally abusive to Hannah, abandons her when she is ill, etc. Would anyone be willing to say that Landon has fulfilled his wedding vow? Surely not. This shows that we see wedding vows as promises not simply to feel a certain way, but primarily as promises to act a certain way.

So marital vows do create new moral obligations. Furthermore, we typically think that the strength of the moral obligation generated by making a promise varies with the seriousness of the promise-making, the clarity of the promises made, and the consequences of breaking the promise. Marital promises score high in all three categories. A wedding vow, celebrated with all the pomp and circumstance many people can afford, is one of the most serious promises most people ever make. And although the clarity of wedding vows is not universal, many couples carefully construct the wording of their vows, spending a long time talking through what they are and are not willing to promise one another. Finally, breaking a marriage promise often has devastating effects for numerous people. In all, then, it appears that the marriage promise creates a strong and special obligation between the marriage partners.

Illegitimate Promises

Marriage obligations exist because of promises, then. So in order to determine whether divorce is morally permissible, we need to determine whether it would violate marriage promises.

First, it follows that divorce is morally permissible if marital promises have failed to generate special moral obligations in the first place. We noted that making a promise does usually generate moral duties. However, not all promises generate obligations. In particular, promises generate new obligations only when the person making the promise is autonomous , and informed, and does so willingly. Otherwise, the promise is morally illegitimate. We might say that it is not a real promise.

Sometimes a partner is coerced into marriage. Such coercion affects the condition that the marriage promise be made willingly . When angry parents force a scared pregnant girl to marry the father of her unborn child, it is implausible that either she or he does so entirely willingly. Alternatively, a marriage partner might be too young, too mentally undeveloped, or otherwise incompetent to make a morally binding pledge such as is required for a true marriage promise. In such cases, the promises are not made by a fully autonomous agent. When a thirteen-year-old girl marries a much older man, as is common in some cultures, it is implausible that she is emotionally and intellectually developed enough to give fully autonomous consent to the kind of promise made between partners in a marriage. Finally, a marriage partner might have been too ignorant of the situation or nature of the other partner, or even blatantly deceived by them. In such a case, the promise is not made by a suitably informed agent. For instance, when a girl deceives her partner about the fact that she is HIV positive, such deception annuls their marital promises.

In all of these cases, the marital promises are illegitimate, and hence they create no special moral duties between the partners. And if there are no such special moral duties, then it is morally permissible to sever the relationship through divorce.

Bilateral Divorce

If I promise to pick you up from the airport, but you find another ride, you may release me from my promise. Just as making a legitimate promise creates an obligation, releasing someone from a promise eliminates an obligation. Thus, one straightforward way for divorce to be morally permissible would be for both partners to release the other from their respective marital promises. Call that a ‘bilateral’ divorce – a divorce by mutual consent.

You might think that even if the two partners agree to end a marriage, it is still wrong to do so if their promises were made before God. However, a promise before someone is different than a promise to someone. A promise made before you makes you a witness, whereas a promise made to you makes you a beneficiary. You don’t have to get God’s permission in a case where He is not the beneficiary.

It is important to note two more things. First, even though a bilateral divorce is typically morally permissible – in other words, it is morally permissible all other things being equal – sometimes all other things are not equal. An obvious example of this kind of case involves families with children. Parents have moral obligations to their children as well as to each other. Insofar as these obligations require that parents refrain from doing what is bad for their children, and insofar as divorce is bad for children, then other factors notwithstanding, these same parental obligations require that parents refrain from getting a divorce, at least while the children are young enough to suffer harm from it.

Second, many people are troubled by apparently cavalier divorces. Hollywood stars who get married apparently on a whim and divorced six months later provide typical examples. These cases appear to be cases of bilateral divorce, and hence they are to that extent morally permissible. So what do we find so troubling about them? My suggestion is that there seems something amiss with the moral character of people who behave in this sort of way. What they do may, strictly speaking, be morally permissible, but the apparent attitude behind it reveals a moral vice: that they are quick to make promises that they are unable or unwilling to keep. People who casually make and abandon marital promises are not, morally speaking, the kind of people we want to be. This is not moral behaviour in the wider application of the term.

Divorce When A Partner Cannot Fulfill Their Duties

Moral philosophers often say that ought implies can. What they mean is that if you really ought to do something, this implies you must be able to do that thing. In other words, it is conceptually confused to say of someone that he ought to do something if it is impossible for him to do it. This principle is relevant to divorce in the following way: if you become unable to do what you have promised to do, then you cannot have a moral obligation to do that thing. And hence divorce will be morally permissible any time one of the partners is literally unable to keep the marital promise. However, determining whether a divorce is permissible for this reason requires being clear about what marital promises are about.

In many cases, marital promises are about goals over which we have indirect control. Two plausible candidates for the goals that marital promises are aimed at are: (A) the goal of fostering a loving relationship between the partners, and (B) the long-term goal of making a partner’s life better.

Suppose that these are both plausible candidates for what we are pledging when we get married. If the goal is (B), we have the following interesting result: when staying together does not make your partner’s life better, in the long run, then your marital promises do not obligate you to stay together. For example, suppose one of the partners becomes involved in an extramarital affair, and that she and her lover are happy building their lives together. In this case, it is morally permissible for the other partner to initiate a divorce on the grounds that his promise to his partner was aimed at making her life better and he is unable to do so given the current situation. Because he cannot do so, he has no moral obligation to do so. Thus, in this sort of circumstance it may be morally permissible to formally mutually end the relationship.

Unilateral Divorce

A ‘unilateral’ divorce happens when only one of the partners desires the dissolution of the marriage. Since promises produce moral obligations, the obligations from marital promises make it morally wrong to seek a unilateral divorce in many cases. Consider the case of a man who wants to divorce his wife on the grounds that she has been recently diagnosed with a chronic degenerative disease. This is not a morally permissable ground for divorce. In particular, neither non-reciprocation nor the lack of happiness of one of the partners justifies unilateral divorce.

Many people who divorce cite the fact that their partners did not reciprocate in certain ways as justification for the divorce. Their partners weren’t ‘doing their part’ in the relationship. Whether this counts as a morally adequate reason to get a divorce depends on whether the marriage promises were unconditional or conditional, and the nature of the conditions. Take, for instance, the promise to be sexually faithful to one’s partner. On an unconditional reading, this promise says, ‘No matter what happens, I promise to be sexually faithful to you’. However, on a conditional reading, the promise might say, ‘I will be sexually faithful to you so long as you are sexually faithful to me’. On the unconditional reading, one has a moral reason to be sexually faithful to one’s partner regardless of what he or she has done. On the conditional reading, one has a moral reason to be sexually faithful to one’s partner if and only if he or she has also been sexually faithful. Generally, if marital promises are conditional, then the non-reciprocation of a partner in such a way would cancel out the moral obligation generated, and hence a divorce would be morally permissible. But if marital promises are unconditional, then the non-reciprocation of a partner is morally irrelevant, and hence a divorce would be morally impermissible.

Does happiness, or the lack of it, count as a valid condition for divorce?

Regarding the (supposed) right to be happy, many people cite their ongoing unhappiness as the justification for their divorce. The idea is that if it becomes impossible for a person to be genuinely happy while married to their partner, it is morally permissible for them to divorce that partner.

Two things should be noted in response to this line of thought. First, a right to be happy is at best a negative right: it is at best the right to pursue happiness as long as you can do so without violating the rights of others. But this sort of right doesn’t mean that a divorce is morally permissible, even if it is true that one cannot be happy without a divorce. Compare this with the negative right to own a car (that is, the right to take steps to own a car as long as you can do so without violating the rights of others). This right doesn’t mean that stealing a car is morally permissible, even if it is true that you cannot get one without stealing it. The crucial issue in both cases is whether the action in question would violate a moral obligation, and in both cases it would: breaking a marital promise in the first case, and the obligation not to steal in the second. Second, we don’t ordinarily think that one can get out of a promise, like any other sort of contract, simply because performance of the promise or contract will cause one unhappiness. Consider a standard commercial contract: one business cannot renege on a contract with another business even if doing so would be crucial for the profits or success of the first business. Or suppose I promise to pick you up from the airport, but on the appointed day realize that I would be happier doing other things. This does not mean that I no longer have a moral obligation to pick you up from the airport. By the same reasoning, one’s happiness, or lack of it, does not on its own make breaking a marital promise morally permissable.

Thoughts To Take Away

Many divorces are morally permissible. These include cases in which the marriage promise was illegitimate, scenarios in which one of the partners is unable to fulfill the promises, and considered bilateral divorce. But many divorces are also morally wrong, including those in which the partners have other obligations that require them to stay together, at least for a time, and unilateral divorces in which one partner’s non-reciprocation or one’s right to be happy is cited as the sole reason for the divorce.

There are two take-away thoughts. First, we should be very careful with the promises that we make to our marriage partner on our wedding day. These promises ground special moral obligations, and yet they are all too often vague, unclear, or impossible to fulfill. Partners entering into a marriage should have explicit conversations about their expectations for the future, the promises they are willing to make to one another, and the unconditional or conditional nature of such promises. Second, we should also be very careful about the decision to get a divorce. Whether a divorce is morally permissible depends on a great many things, including the content of the promises made between the partners.Merely citing a right to be happy does not dissolve the moral obligations we have in other areas of life. Nor does it on its own obviate the moral obligation we have to stick with a spouse when doing so makes us unhappy.

© Dr Justin P. McBrayer 2017

Justin McBrayer is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Innsbruck and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fort Lewis College, the liberal arts college for the state of Colorado.

This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy . X

The Ethics of Divorce and Remarriage

Dennis mccallum.

Adapted from Spiritual Love

Any divorce poses a serious challenge to further marital success. Statistically, the divorce rate for marriages in which either or both partners have been divorced before is almost double that for first-time marriages. 1  This is a very imposing statistic, because it means the vast majority of second attempts at marriage will fail. Those who have cohabited for some time also experience increased failure in marriage, as we have seen. Their figures are similar to divorcees' figures. In the church it is not uncommon to see cases of successful second marriages, especially when the first marriage was in a non Christian context. However, failures are also common, which should suggest the need for caution.

Most pastors and counselors know all too well the reasons for this high failure rate.

In the first place, people usually learn little or nothing from a failed marriage. Divorcees usually blame their ex-spouses for the problems that led to divorce, with little understanding of the role they played in the failure. But marital problems are virtually never strictly the result of one partner's sin. Underlying the divorcees' blame perspective is the thought that if only they had married someone else, all would have been well. Such thinking is antithetical to our argument all along, which is that the key is not just to  find  the right person for marriage, but to  become  the right person for marriage. As long as divorcees remain unable to see where they (not their ex-spouses) went wrong, the chances of a repeat performance are excellent.

Once divorcees gain some understanding of what was wrong with their  own  way of relating, the first brick is in place. But it's not enough. They still need to make progress in changing those patterns. After articulating what your problems were in the failed marriage, you can work toward resolving those problems in the context of non-marital relationships, provided you have built such relationships. Any hope that merely marrying a different spouse will correct the problem is usually forlorn.

Especially if your divorce involved children, it becomes doubly important to relate to your ex-spouse in an amicable way for the sake of the children, who will benefit from having parents who are cooperative, and to maximize your ability to leave the old marriage behind emotionally.

Another reason for repeated failure is that divorcees tend to repeat their own bad choices of who to marry. Divorcees often choose a new mate externally different than their ex-spouse, but beneath the externals, we can see the same criteria for choice at work.

Finally, in some cases it might not be ethical to re-marry after a divorce unless it is with the estranged spouse. Christians need to determine where they stand with regard to the ethical principles given in the gospels and in 1 Corinthians 7 before moving into another marriage. There are several ways of understanding these passages, including ways that would permit remarriage after most divorce situations. 2

These passages are written to normal lay believers, not just Bible experts. Therefore, you should be able to enter into a study of the passages with help from study aids, and reach your own conclusions. You may also need to check with your church leadership on how they understand the passages, especially if you expect them to perform the marriage. Until both partners feel comfortable with the correctness of marriage in their situation based on study of God's Word, they cannot go ahead with confidence.

For another perspective on 1 Cor. 7, see the following teaching notes by Gary DeLashmutt.

There is a bewildering variety of factors pertaining to divorce and remarriage. Christians whose marriages are in trouble often want a proof-text to justify their chosen course of action, or a simple verse which tells them what to do. But it doesn't work that way. Neither this passage nor any other biblical passage gives us a case-by-case catalogue on what to do. Rather, God gives us a framework on this subject, and then expects us to prayerfully apply this framework to our own situations—taking full responsibility for our decisions.God's framework consists of these main truths:

God's provision for sexual union is marriage. Unless we have been gifted with celibacy (or no one will marry us), marriage is God's provision for our sexual expression (Genesis 2:24; 1 Corinthians 7:8-9).

God designed marriage to be permanent  (Genesis 2:24). He hates divorce because it violates his design (Malachi 2:16). Jesus emphasized this in Matthew 19:4-6.

God recognizes that divorce is sometimes the lesser of two evils.  He recognizes that because of hardness of heart (Deuteronomy 24:1-4; Matthew19:7,8).

Any position which does not apply  all  of these truths is not fully biblical. Let's see how Paul applies them in answering the Corinthians' questions...

Christian Married Couples (vs 10-11)

Read vs 10-11. From the following context (vs 12), it is clear Paul is addressing Christian married couples—both husband and wife have personally received Christ.

It is also clear that some of these couples were having serious marital problems! What? Marital problems in Christian marriages? Nothing has changed in this area!! Christians are no more immune to marital problems than non-Christians (DAMAGE; SELFISHNESS)!

In spite of this, Paul is clear (he also refers to Jesus' statement in Matt.19) that Christians should not cut out on the marriage when problems arise (vs 10b-11b).Instead, they should stay put to work on their marriages. Building a successful and satisfying marriage takes commitment and hard work. Here, we are called to stand in direct opposition to our culture which has destroyed the sanctity of marriage, and provides us with convenient excuses to quit when things get tough. Consider these modern myths about divorce:

“Acknowledging the likelihood of divorce will help rather than hurt our marriage.”  (PRE-NUPTIAL AGREEMENTS) This attitude is often fatal to marriage. It allows us to enter into marriage lightly, and it justifies impatience when problems emerge. Christians should enter marriage carefully and be fully committed to make it work. "Divorce" should not be in our vocabulary as we get married.

"I married the wrong person; we are incompatible. By getting a divorce, I am simply correcting an earlier problem instead of prolonging it."  People are not incompatible by nature. They choose to be incompatible because of selfishness and hard-heartedness against God's conviction. This is why those who divorce with this mentality and remarry usually get divorced again. Instead, we should focus on becoming the right person.

"Getting a divorce is no big deal. I'll get over it soon and there will be no lasting consequences."  What a lie! The fact is that divorce always brings great pain to both spouses, and when there are children involved, they will pay a price. It is  always  preferable to work the marriage out if at all possible.

There is another reason why Christians should stay put and work on their marriages. The same God who calls us to do this provides us with the resources to succeed. With God's Word to inform us, with his Spirit to empower us, and with his people to assist us, we have all we need to eventually transform a nasty marriage into one that is rich and deeply satisfying! Marriage can be excruciating, but as long as  both  people are committed to following God's ways and depending on his resources, there is no marriage so messed up that God can't heal it.

So don't take the attractive "escape hatch" that leads to further misery—hang in there with the Lord and with your spouse and discover his transforming power!

But  Paul knows that even Christians can choose not to trust God's provision. One  Christian spouse can choose to harden his/her heart against God's will, and turn a marriage into a living hell (DRUG ABUSE; VIOLENCE; SEXUAL INFIDELITY). So Paul qualifies his insistence that Christians stay put by saying, "but if she does leave."

The language ( chorizoo  and  aphiemi ) could mean either separation or divorce. My own view is that Paul is referring to separation.Sometimes, when one spouse is severely hard-hearted, a separation may be needed in order to get the other person's attention. When this is the case, Paul warns the spouse who initiates the separation for this reason to be careful: be intent on reconciliation and don't get involved with someone else.

I don't think Paul is laying down a permanent restriction. If the other spouse refuses to work on the marriage and it ends, Paul seems to indicate that the divorcee is free to remarry (vs. 8-9—"unmarried" is general; vs. 27-28—"released from a wife" is different from single/virgin). However, like all Christians they should marry another Christian (vs 39; 2 Corinthians 6:14).

SUMMARIZE the three truths...

Christians Married To Non-Christians (vs 12-16)

Next, Paul addresses their question about mixed marriages. There are two ways this can happen: one spouse becomes a Christian, or a Christian (wrongly) marries a non-Christian. Read vs 12-14. Although Paul cannot quote Jesus on this situation, he can still apply God's revealed truth (and does so under inspiration).

Paul anticipates that the Corinthians in such marriages would get divorced because they believed such a sexual union would defile the Lord (6:16). Instead, he says such marriages are valid because God gave marriage to all people (Christian or non-Christian), so they should remain married. Furthermore, this union does not defile the Christian; instead it "sanctifies" the non-Christian spouse and children.

Of course, this doesn't mean that they are somehow saved. The Bible consistently insists that we must each individually choose to receive Christ in order to be saved (John 1:12; 3:16).

Rather, he means that they are "set apart" for special spiritual influence through the Christian spouse—influence that may well result in their salvation.When a spouse (or any family member) receives Christ and faithfully walks with him, the non-Christian family members are convicted of their need for Christ in a powerful way. This is why we often see family members come to Christ.

But the Christian must be faithful to Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through him/her. This is implied by "consents." Paul assumes the Christian spouse will be allowing the Lord to change his behavior and attitudes (FORGIVE SPOUSE; REPENT & ASK FORGIVENESS FOR SINS; INITIATE LOVE; MODEL CHRIST'S WAY OF LIFE). He also assumes that the Christian spouse will be firm in his commitment to spiritual growth (means of growth) and sharing Christ with family members instead of compromising these areas to "keep the peace." It is in such a life that the sanctifying influence is strongest, and the non-Christian spouse is often attracted to Christ.

However, Paul recognizes that mixed marriages sometimes don't work out. However faithful the Christian spouse is, the non-Christian spouse has free will and may be adamant in his/her refusal of Christ and even want out of the marriage. This can be quite overt, but it can also be more subtle (refusing to allow the Christian spouse to influence the children or go to fellowship). In such cases, Paul says to let the marriage end.

Don't feel that their salvation is dependent on the continuation of the marriage (vs. 16). By fighting their desire to leave, you may only promote continual and destructive strife because of their hardness of heart—but "God has called us to peace."

Virtually all commentators understand vs. 15b ("the brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases") as Paul reminding the Christian spouse that he/she is free to remarry in such cases (see again vs. 8-9; vs. 27-28).

1  "One of the most clear-cut findings from the 1970 divorce data is the high likelihood of divorce for persons who have been married more than once..."  Divorces and Divorce Rates , (Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; Public Health Service, National Center for Health Statistics, 1980). Put differently, the average duration of marriage before divorce is only half as long for the second marriage and one-third as long for third marriages.  Duration of Marriage Before Divorce: United States , (Hyattsville, MD.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Public Health Service, Office of Health Research, Statistics, and Technology, National Center for Health Statistics, 1981) p.12ff.

2  From a lenient point of view, see James M. Efird,  Marriage and Divorce: What the Bible Says , (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985). For a more technical survey of various views and of exegetical and linguistic issues see Donald W. Shaner,  A Christian View of Divorce According to the New Testament , (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969). For a mixed view, see John MacArthur,  The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: I Corinthians , (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984) pp.153-186.

Alberta, Canada, 2005. Photo by Alex Webb/Magnum

A manly divorce

Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence.

by Joshua Coleman   + BIO

The past few decades witnessed a flood of personal essays and memoirs about divorce. Perhaps the most successful was Eat, Pray, Love (2006) by Elizabeth Gilbert, which has sold more than 12 million copies to date, and became a movie starring Julia Roberts. In her breakaway bestseller, Gilbert describes her ‘devastating, interminable divorce’ and the search for fulfilment that followed it. The book’s popularity is not only due to Gilbert being a gifted writer, but also her ability to capture a cultural perception of marriage as an institution often antithetical to personal growth and self-development. What’s more, the book is just one of dozens tracking the same territory: the freedom and self-exploration that comes of departing from past strictures and setting a new course.

While men have written their fair share of marital advice books, only a handful of marriage memoirs have been written by them. Which prompts the question: aren’t men also happy to leave bad marriages, work their way through their feelings of guilt, and ultimately find a better life? And, if they are, why aren’t more saying so? Are such proclamations considered to be the domain only of women, rendering such ideation too feminine for men to acknowledge? Does it look too narcissistic for men to also have a ‘What I learned from my divorce’ narrative? Or are men just not that interested in the topic – or, for that matter, are they not liberated by divorce itself?

In the context of the traditional, heterosexual marriage, it’s important to acknowledge that women’s freedom to negotiate a relationship more in line with their ideals, or to leave altogether, is relatively recent. It is also important to acknowledge that this freedom has not been universally achieved, either globally or in the United States. From that perspective, the archetypal hero’s journey narrated by Gilbert and other female memoirists is likely born – among other aspirations – from a desire to push back against historically oppressive forces. As the historian Stephanie Coontz argued in her opinion piece ‘How to Make Your Marriage Gayer’ (2020) for The New York Times :

Right up to the 1970s, when an American woman married, her husband took charge of her sexuality and most of her finances, property and behaviour … During the 1970s and 1980s, wives won legal equality with husbands and courts redefined the responsibilities of spouses in gender-neutral terms. By 1994 a majority of Americans repudiated the necessity for gender-specialised roles in marriage, saying instead that shared responsibilities should be the ideal.

However, legal equality has not necessarily made marriage a more equitable place for women. As Coontz notes, while the model of shared responsibility has become the ideal in principle, it remains far from the reality in practice. Today’s women – at least those in heterosexual marriages – do twice the amount of childcare and almost twice as much housework compared with men, including women in full-time employment. Men after marriage do less housework than when they were single, while women do even more, especially when they become mothers .

Women are also more likely to carry the emotional burdens of their extended network of family and friends – to keep track of birthdays, gifts and crises – and to respond with cards, calls and outreach; a task sociologists refer to as ‘kinkeeping’. While this orientation has the potential to make for deep and lasting relationships with friends or family, the sociologists Ronald Kessler and Jane Mcleod observe that this effort takes an emotional toll when it involves helping loved ones manage stressful life events. In those cases, what they call a ‘cost of caring’ leaves women more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and burnout, a reality from which men are often insulated.

While men arguably love their wives as much as their wives love them (and, in some cases, even more), their identities are less oriented around care work per se, and more commonly toward achievement, self-direction and status, as a survey of men and women in 68 different countries confirmed in 2009. However, the stereotype of the self-centred and clueless male paints a pale portrait of what many men experience today. It also ignores the cost paid by men pressured to prize status and invulnerability over connection. For example, men account for almost three out of four ‘deaths of despair’, as the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton term it, either from a suicide or overdose, especially those down the economic ladder. Many men feel rudderless today since the role of provider and protector is no longer a pathway to identity. Men who lack the ability to provide, protect or significantly contribute to the family are psychologically the least likely to be able to offer their wives the kind of vulnerable, emotional and collaborative support that predicts today’s stable marriages. They’re more likely to retreat into anger, addiction and internet use, a dark triad of traits stemming from a preoccupation with self-reliance. Unfortunately, being vulnerable, talking about their feelings and asking their wives about theirs is the last thing most men want to do when they’re feeling small or defective. And they certainly don’t want to write about it.

It doesn’t help that so little understanding for men can be found across the political spectrum. As the economist Richard Reeves writes in Of Boys and Men (2022), progressives are quick to label problematic male behaviours in marriage as evidence of toxic masculinity and propose that men should be rehabilitated to learn how to communicate their feelings and needs in more socially adaptive ways. The populist Right, on the other hand, weaponises men’s dislocation and offers false promises such as removing women from the workforce or re-establishing men’s seat at the head of the family economic table – all the while failing to endorse family or work policies that would aid working men, women and their families.

I t’s important to ask: ‘Who’s leaving whom?’ Maybe men also don’t write about their divorces because of the shame that attends their wives’ leaving them, since, in the US at least, most of the time men are the ones getting left. Because men are more conflicted about showing weakness or vulnerability, it’s not difficult to see why men aren’t lining up to reveal themselves in this way, or finding a narrative of growth or transformation. In addition, men can face worse health effects than women after divorce or widowhood. They’re more likely to die or become ill if they don’t remarry or re-couple. Since husbands are the primary beneficiaries of their wives’ behaviours – such as scheduling doctor’s appointments, therapists or social engagements – the absence of this care can lead men’s orientation toward independence on a self-neglectful, even self-destructive course.

Another reason men – at least those in heterosexual marriages – sometimes do worse after divorce is that, for a significant percentage, their wives are their best friend, if not their only friend. Women commonly have much more extensive social networks, which may explain why they’re more likely to show resilience post-divorce, even if they’re often more at risk financially. Friendship is important and carries a whole host of psychological and health benefits. My wife calls her closest friends her ‘sister wives’. I like the double helix of the term, the way it encircles them as siblings and spouses, where platonic rather than romantic love is the bond. She talks to them often, sometimes daily. I like talking to my wife too, but not all of the time, and sometimes not as much as she wants. She accepts that we have temperamentally different inclinations towards conversation. And her acceptance of that disparity allows me to feel comfortable expressing vulnerability in ways that I would likely avoid under less favourable marital conditions.

However, many men today are caught between knowing what’s enough vulnerability with their wives – and what’s too much. Years ago, I saw a cartoon with two women in conversation; the caption read: ‘I want a guy who will well up with tears, I just don’t want one who actually cries.’ While that may or may not be true for the majority of women, it’s certainly true for some, at least based on my own private practice. Which is to say that men aren’t the only ones doing the gender policing around men’s emotions.

It’s good to be able to talk over your feelings but also good to know when to put them away

Some of these differences begin in childhood. Men are sometimes less fluent with feelings in adulthood, in part because parents, even parents today, are more likely to use emotion words with girls than they are with boys. This may also occur because girls begin talking at a younger age and remain more verbal than boys throughout their lives. The psychology professor Thomas Joiner found that, overall, boys are more secretive with their parents than are girls, and less responsive to and inclusive of their mothers. ‘The fact that, when the genders are combined into one group, gender rises to the top as a predictor of speech frequency, even beyond a personality characteristic like expressivity, shows its fundamental importance,’ Joiner writes in Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men’s Success (2011). ‘Speech frequency is of obvious importance to interpersonal exchange; indeed, it can be viewed as its currency … Talk can be viewed as tiny stitches in a social fabric; the more stitches, the more varied and durable the fabric.’ Men have fewer friends, fewer sources of support, and are far less likely to reach out for help. This means that, when they fall, there’s often no one there to catch them. Worse, they often won’t let anyone know that they’re falling.

Our society, and we therapists, idealise communication, vulnerability and expression of emotions, overall, for good reason. But, sometimes, not expressing yourself – more often the domain of men – has its own value. It’s similar to the parenting differences observed between women and men. Mothers tend to be more communicative, more sympathetic to the child, and more prone to guilt or worry about them. Fathers tend to be less conflicted about limit-setting, less preoccupied with the inner life of the child, and more oriented toward stimulation and excitement. Too much of one spoils the child. Too much of the other induces less self-reflection and emotional awareness. While everyone’s needs are different, the same could be said of a healthy marriage: it’s good to be able to talk over your feelings but also good to know when to put them away. As we therapists sometimes advise: ‘Before you say you don’t feel heard, consider how well you listen.’

Perhaps this is why the comedian Chris Rock’s observation – that men care about three things only: sex, food and silence – gets such a big laugh. There’s some truth in it. But I think it’s less about silence than it is the absence of conflict. While women can’t be described as liking conflict, some report that they see it as affirming when their husbands complain, since at least it shows he’s thinking about the relationship. Meanwhile, men often experience their wives’ complaints as a failure in their role as men or partners.

Because men in both straight and same-sex marriages are more preoccupied with sex than are women, they also suffer a greater cost by its absence. More to the point, sex is often a way that men gain access to their vulnerability and expressiveness, something women value. I often see couples caught in a downward spiral where the wife says she doesn’t want to be sexual unless her husband shows more vulnerability and openness, and the husband states that he has more difficulty accessing his vulnerability and romantic feelings without sex. I occasionally hear wives say they feel used by their husband’s preoccupation with having sex with them. I think that misunderstands the meaning of sex in marriage: for most men, it’s not just about the sex. It’s about the connection. Well, that and the sex.

It is tragic, though not surprising, that fathers are more likely to be estranged from their girls than from their boys

My experience counselling men and couples for the past four decades shows me that men also long to have close, intimate relationships, and sometimes leave their wives to pursue them when they feel too rejected or ignored. Yet a man leaving his marriage for love seems freighted with more condemnation or contempt than a woman. Culturally, this seems less permissible, and may also explain why men aren’t telling their stories. Perhaps we still have the idea that leaving a marriage is a more selfish act for a man because we assume that women agonise more about its effect on their children. In addition, our outdated ideas about men in marriage, along with men’s more self-reliant orientation, may cause us to believe that men don’t care as much and therefore don’t deserve as much empathy. Those beliefs might also be fuelled by the fact that, traditionally, men have been better able than women to land on their feet financially and have a better chance of re-coupling post-divorce.

Yet, fathers in my practice worry a lot before and after their divorces. In particular, they worry about how the divorce will affect their children and their relationship with them. With good reason, as it turns out. Recent research by the sociologist Rin Reczek at Ohio State University and colleagues found that, while roughly 6 per cent of people report a period of estrangement from mothers, a whopping 26 per cent of respondents report estrangement from fathers, especially by daughters. While not all of those fathers are divorced, my research shows that some 70 per cent of estranged parents became so after a divorce.

It is tragic, though not entirely surprising, that fathers are more likely to be estranged from their girls than from their boys. Daughters often seem to speak the same language as their mothers, their inclinations toward empathy allowing them to sense what she is feeling or thinking at an almost psychic level. As the journalist Ruth Whippman observed in The New York Times in 2018:

At both its best and its worst, the mother-daughter relationship can at times be as close as two humans can get to telepathy. With two people who are both heavily socialised to anticipate and meet everyone else’s emotional needs, the dynamic can become a kind of high-alert empathy, each constantly attempting to decode what the other might be thinking, hypersensitive to any change in pitch or tone, like a pair of high-strung racehorses.

While that disposition can make for a close relationship, it is not without its burdens. Mothers and daughters are the most common dyad seeking my services after the daughter has cut off contact. It’s another example of the way that care work, a predominantly female enterprise, can cause problems. Estrangement sometimes results because the daughter knows no other way to shed herself of the tidal pull of her mother’s emotions, especially painful ones. As Deborah Levy writes of a fictional mother in her novel Hot Milk (2016): ‘I must never look at her defeat with all I know, because I will turn it to stone with my disdain and my sorrow.’

N on-heterosexual marriages are less governed by gender-role expectations, though men in same-sex marriages still behave differently from women in same-sex marriages. Like straight men, gay men are less likely to engage in the kind of care work that is more common with women in straight and lesbian marriages but are more likely to share the care equally between the two partners when needed. Gay men appear to do better both in marriage and in communication, and have the lowest divorce rates in comparison with straight and gay women. They are more likely to openly discuss their sexual preferences and have agreements about the circumstances and types of sexual contact allowed outside the marriage. In The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (2022) Louise Perry writes :

[T]he average differences in male and female sexuality become glaringly obvious when we look at the gay and lesbian communities. Although it may be controversial to point out how dramatically these two sexual cultures differ, there is plenty of hard data that it would be dishonest to ignore. Lesbian women are remarkably keen on committed monogamy: the median lesbian woman in the UK reports just one sexual partner within the last year, and a majority report having known their sexual partners for months or years before they first had sex. Lesbian women are also significantly more likely than gay men to get married or enter into a civil partnership.

However, in comparison with gay male or heterosexual couples in marriage, lesbian marriages are also the most likely to end. As Coontz writes in her 2020 opinion piece:

Women put more energy into maintaining and deepening intimacy than most men do and have much more extensive expectations of empathy and emotional support. They also monitor relationship quality more closely and have higher standards for it. These traits can produce exceptionally intimate, supportive relationships, but they also consume a lot of energy and can generate stress or disappointment. This may help explain why lesbian partnerships, despite their high average quality, have higher breakup rates than gay-male couples or different-sex couples.

I asked Diane Ehrensaft, a psychology professor and gender specialist at the University of California, San Francisco and the author of Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender Non-Conforming Children (2011), about how these dynamics express themselves in transgender marriages and divorces. ‘I think to answer that question you have to break it down into: when one or both of the partners is trans when they come into the relationship, versus when one person transitions while in the relationship, and, within that category, when they start out as a heterosexual couple versus a same-sex couple,’ she explained in an email. ‘Mostly what I’ve observed when one person transitions after getting together, the trend seems to be that the woman in a previously heterosexual relationship doesn’t want to be with a woman, whereas I’ve noticed in same-sex gay relationships the couple is more likely to stay together if one transitions to transfeminine, and in same-sex two women relationships, it’s the woman who usually wants out if her partner transitions to transmasculine. So, I guess you might say that women either have their finger on the pulse more about what works for them or are less flexible about switching gears in their sexual relationships.’ She went on to clarify that her statements were observations, not hard data.

T he German historian Ute Frevert observed that: ‘[E]motions are not only made by history, they also make history.’ Perhaps nowhere is this truer than in the ways that feelings, far more than economics, social class or status, became crucial in determining whom to love and whom to leave. Sociologists of modernity such as Anthony Giddens in the UK, Ulrich Beck in Germany, and Pierre Bourdieu in France have noted that, as our lives began to be less governed by religion, neighbourhood or gender, our emotions became far more central in helping us decide whom to be close to or avoid. This highlights that, while women’s orientation toward care work and men’s emphasis on self-reliance may seem predetermined, it is in some ways historically recent. ‘In the localised and hierarchical society of the premodern era, no interactions were impersonal,’ the historian Coontz explained in an email quoting from her forthcoming book on the history and future of love and marriage. ‘Men had to gauge the moods to soothe the feelings of their social superiors; while women felt no obligation to be considerate of their social inferiors. But as work moved out of the home and politics became more competitive, men had to distance themselves from personal emotions and focus on “the bottom line”. Their wives became responsible for providing men a refuge from the demands of the workplace and the market, anticipating their needs and offering a place for emotional recuperation. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the doctrine of separate spheres made it inappropriate for men to read and respond to other people’s emotions, and inappropriate – indeed unacceptable – for women NOT to do so.’

Expanding on the role of emotions, the Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz describes three narratives that attend today’s contemplations of divorce – revelation , accumulation , and trauma. In this process, individuals retrospectively explain the desire or decision to disentangle themselves from the person with whom they were romantically involved by labelling and using emotions as a moral foundation to support decisions to stay or leave. ‘I shouldn’t have to feel so neglected all of the time.’ ‘I deserve to be with someone who is more affirming of who I am.’ ‘His anger was a form of emotional abuse and I don’t have to put up with that.’

Illouz notes that, over the course of the 20th century, the reasons for divorce became more affective and abstract. While alcoholism or neglect were most commonly given as reasons to divorce in the 1940s, by the 1970s and beyond, ‘growing apart’, ‘becoming more distant’ and ‘feeling unloved’ took their place. The ‘Relationships in America Survey’ (2014), sponsored by the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture, found the following reasons for divorce listed by respondents: infidelity (37 per cent); spouse unresponsive to needs (32 per cent); growing tired of making a poor match work (30 per cent); spouse’s immaturity (30 per cent); emotional abuse (29 per cent); different financial priorities (24 per cent); and alcohol and/or drug abuse (23 per cent).

The opportunities for men to display their masculinity and honour have largely eroded

‘[E]motional intimacy has been a force of dis-institutionalisation, making marriage more likely to follow psychology than sociology, individual temperament rather than roles and norms,’ writes Illouz in The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Emotions (2021). And in Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation (2011), she writes :

It is therefore unsurprising that love has been historically so powerfully seductive to women; it promised them the moral status and dignity they were otherwise denied in society and it glorified their social fate: taking care of and loving others, as mothers, wives, and lovers … Women’s social inferiority could thus be traded for men’s absolute devotion in love, which in turn served as the very site of display and exercise of their masculinity, prowess, and honour.

Yet history marches on. The opportunities for men to display their masculinity and honour have largely eroded, and the ability for women to strongly push back against a perspective of them as inferior has been strengthened by the many ways that women have caught up to men and are surpassing them.

Consider the following statistics, cited by Reeves in Of Boys and Men :

• Girls are about a year ahead of boys in terms of reading ability in OECD nations, while the advantage for boys in mathematics is increasingly shrinking.
• Boys are 50 per cent more likely than girls to fail at mathematics, reading, and science.
• Girls are more likely to graduate from high school.
• While the Ivy League colleges in the US were always predominately male, every one of them today is majority female.
• Women account for around half the managerial positions in the US economy.
• Many previously male-dominated professions, including medicine and financial management, are rapidly tilting female, especially among younger professionals.
• The proportion of women lawyers has increased tenfold, from 4 per cent in 1980 to 43 per cent in 2020.
• In 1968, only 33 per cent of young women in their teens and early 20s said they expected to be in paid work at the age of 35. By 1980, the share was 80 per cent.

This isn’t to say that parity has been reached across the board. Only one in five executive-level company directors is a woman and, of the Fortune 500 firms, just 44 have a female CEO. The share of venture capital money going to female founders is less than 3 per cent. So, at the upper reaches of the economy, there is still much more work to do for women. But, the further you progress down the economic ladder, it’s men who are struggling far more than women.

So, why don’t men write more about their experiences?

Joyce Maynard – a bestselling author of 18 books, including two memoirs – has been hosting writing retreats for more than 20 years. While most of her memoir retreats have been open to men, she notes that they seldom attend. ‘Women have been telling each other their stories all their lives, and it’s not unfamiliar for them to do so,’ she told me in a phone call. ‘But it’s been my experience that for a man to reach a place of openness to exposing emotional pain or struggle, something in his experience had to bring him to his knees.’ Maynard added that, as someone who twice attended previously all-male educational institutions in the Ivy League, she had long observed the difficulty of men – particularly high-achievers – to acknowledge loss or vulnerability. She told the story of attending the recent 50-year reunion of her almost all-male class at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. ‘After decades of feeling the requirement to present themselves as successful,’ she said, ‘as they approached age 70, my classmates were no longer trying to set the world on fire. They had survived failed marriages, trouble with adult children, health issues. Many seemed relieved to finally be able to set down the mantle our culture had instructed them to carry all those years. They were able to reveal their more authentic selves in a whole new way. And, of course that’s what writing memoir requires: a willingness to look at one’s failures as well as one’s victories, and then make sense of them.’

To be clear, some men are writing memoirs on this topic: ‘The Marriage Lesson That I Learned Too Late’ (2022) by Matthew Fray; The Marriage Advice I Wish I Would’ve Had (2014) by Gerald Rogers; Falling Forward: A Man’s Memoir of Divorce (2014) by Chris Easterly; A Man’s Guide to Surviving Divorce: How to Cope and Move On with Life (2011) by R L Blackwood; and Men on Divorce: The Other Side of the Story (1997), an anthology by the editors of Women on Divorce (1995) – both female. But they pale in comparison with those authored by women authors.

T he challenges that exist in today’s marriages are exacerbated by our highly individualistic culture in the US, where the gospels of twining one’s soul with another’s while prizing identity and independence are characterised as eminently achievable. Yet reconciling these often-contradictory forces requires enormous emotional and material assets. ‘The very idea of living “autonomously” and organising life as a self-defined, goal-driven, and future-oriented project would seem to require resources, private space, and an independence from other people that only the affluent and upwardly mobile might possess,’ writes the sociologist Joseph E Davis in Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery (2020).

And not to be a bummer but, while the hero’s journey of leaving a bad marriage can make for compelling and sympathetic memoirs, in the US, 67 per cent of second marriages end in divorce too, and 73 per cent of third marriages fail to go the distance. As Joni Mitchell sang in ‘Help Me’ (1974): ‘We love our lovin’. But not like we love our freedom.’ Freedom to stay. Freedom to leave. Freedom to choose. Perhaps a more apt lyric is Sheryl Crow’s: ‘If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad. If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?’

So, maybe, like many things in life, men want the freedom not to talk about it, let alone write it down. Or they want the freedom to hide how sad, lonely or hurt they feel by the loss of their marriages or the decline in the relationships with their children. Maybe they worry that they’ll look weak or inadequate in the eyes of women – let alone men – if they reveal how lost and alone they feel.

And maybe they’re not wrong.

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Decolonising psychology

At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought

Rami Gabriel

Politics and government

Governing for the planet

Nation-states are no longer fit for purpose to create a habitable future for humans and nature. Which political system is?

Jonathan S Blake & Nils Gilman

Anthropology

The Ju/’hoansi protocol

Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity

Vivek V Venkataraman

Progress and modernity

In praise of magical thinking

Once we all had knowledge of how to heal ourselves using plants and animals. The future would be sweeter for renewing it

Anna Badkhen

History of ideas

Baffled by human diversity

Confused 17th-century Europeans argued that human groups were separately created, a precursor to racist thought today

Jacob Zellmer

Archaeology

Beyond kingdoms and empires

A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations and the scope of human freedoms

David Wengrow

Essays About Divorce: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Essays about divorce can be challenging to write; read on to see our top essay examples and writing prompts to help you get started.

Divorce is the legal termination of a marriage. It can be a messy affair, especially if it includes children. Dividing the couple’s assets also often causes chaos when divorce proceedings are in session. 

Divorce also touches and considers religion and tradition. Therefore, laws are formed depending on the country’s history, culture, and belief system.

To help you choose what you want to talk about regarding this topic, here are examples you can read to get an idea of what kind of essay you want to write.

1. Divorce Should Be Legalized in the Philippines by Ernestine Montgomery

2. to divorce or not to divorce by mark ghantous, 3. what if you mess up by manis friedman, 4. divorce: a life-changing experience by writer louie, 5. divorce’s effects on early adult relationships by percy massey, 1. the major reasons for divorce, 2. why i support divorce, 3. my divorce experience, 4. how to avoid divorce, 5. divorce and its effects on my family, 6. the consequences of divorce, 7. divorce laws around the world.

“What we need is a divorce law that defines clearly and unequivocally the grounds and terms for terminating a marriage… Divorce is a choice and we all should have the freedom to make choices… in cases where a union is more harmful than beneficial, a divorce can be benevolent and less hurtful way of severing ties with your partner.”

As the title suggests, Montgomery and his other colleagues discuss why the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, needs to allow divorce. Then, to strengthen his argument, he mentions that Spain, the root of Christianity, and Italy, where the Vatican City is, administer divorce. 

He also mentions bills, relevant figures, and statistics to make his case in favor of divorce more compelling. Montgomery adds that people who want a divorce don’t necessarily mean they want to marry again, citing other motives such as abuse and marital failure.

“Divorce, being the final step in a detrimental marriage, brings upon the gruesome decision as to whether a married couple wishes to end that once made commitment they had for each other. As opposed to the present, divorce was rare in ancient times…”

Ghantous starts his essay with what divorce means, as not only an end of a commitment but also the termination of legal duties and other obligations of the couple to each other. He then talks about divorce in ancient times, when men had superior control over women and their children. He also mentions Caroline Norton, who fought with English family law that was clearly against women.

“So even though G‑d has rules,… laws,… divine commandments, when you sin, He tells you: ‘You messed up? Try again.’ That’s exactly how you should be married — by treating your spouse the way G‑d treats you. With that much mercy and compassion, that much kindness and consideration.”

Friedman’s essay discusses how the Torah sees marriage and divorce and explains it by recounting a scene with his daughters where they couldn’t follow a recipe. He includes good treatment and forgiveness necessary in spouses. But he also explains that God understands and doesn’t want people in a failed marriage to continue hurting. You might also be interested in these essays about commitment .

“Depending on the reasons that led up to the divorce the effects can vary… I was fourteen years old and the one child that suffered the most emotional damage… My parents did not discuss their reasons for the divorce with me, they didn’t have to, and I knew the reasons.”

The author starts the essay by citing the famous marital promise: “For better or worse, for richer or poorer,” before going in-depth regarding the divorce rate among Americans. He further expounds on how common divorce is, including its legalities. Although divorce has established legal grounds, it doesn’t consider the emotional trauma it will cause, especially for children.

Louie recounts how his life changed when his dad moved out, listing why his parents divorced. He ends the essay by saying society is at fault for commercializing divorce as if it’s the only option.

“With divorce becoming more prevalent, many researchers have taken it upon themselves to explore many aspects of this topic such as evolving attitudes, what causes divorce, and how it effects the outcome of children’s lives.”

Massey examines the causes of divorce and how it impacts children’s well-being by citing many relevant research studies. Some of the things he mentions are the connection between the child’s mental health, behavioral issues, and future relationships. Another is the trauma a child can endure during the divorce proceedings.

He also mentions that some children who had a broken family put marriage on a pedestal. As a result, they do their best to create a better future family and treat their children better.

Top 7 Prompts on Essays About Divorce

After adding to your knowledge about the subject, you’re better prepared to write essays about divorce.

There are many causes of the dissolution of marriage, and many essays have already discussed these reasons. However, you can explain these reasons differently. For example, you can focus on domestic abuse, constant fighting, infidelity, financial issues, etc.

If you want to make your piece stand out, you can include your personal experience, but only if you’re comfortable sharing your story with others. 

If you believe divorce offers a better life for all parties involved, list these benefits and explain them. Then, you can focus on a specific pro of legalizing divorce, such as getting out of an abusive relationship. 

If you want to write an essay to argue against the negative effects of divorce, here’s an excellent guide on how to write an argumentative essay .

This prompt is not only for anyone who has no or sole guardian. If you want to write about the experiences of a child raised by other people or who lives with a single parent, you can interview a friend or anyone willing to talk about their struggles and triumphs even if they didn’t have a set of parents.

Aside from reasons for divorce, you can talk about what makes these reasons more probable. Then, analyze what steps couples can take to avoid it. Such as taking couples’ therapy, weekly family get-together, etc. To make your essay more valuable, weigh in on what makes these tips effective.

Divorce is diverse and has varying effects. There are many elements to its results, and no two sets of factors are precisely the same for two families. 

If you have an intimate experience of how your immediate and extended family dynamic had been affected by divorce, narrate those affairs. Include what it made you and the others around you feel. You might also be interested in these essays about conflict .

This is a broad prompt, but you can narrow it down by focusing on an experience you or a close friend had. You can also interview someone closely related to a divorce case, such as a lawyer, reporter, or researcher. 

If you don’t have any experience with divorce, do not know anyone who had to go through it, or is more interested in its legal aspects, compiles different divorce laws for each country. You can even add a brief history for each law to make the readers understand how they came about.

Are you looking for other topics to write on? Check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Divorce, Disorientation, and Remarriage

• Published: 19 October 2019
• Volume 23 , pages 531–544, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• Christopher Cowley 1  

572 Accesses

2 Citations

Explore all metrics

This paper asks three inter-related questions, proceeding chronologically through a divorcee’s experience: (i) is it responsible and rational to make an unconditional marital vow in the first place? (ii) does divorce break that unconditional marital vow? And the main question: (iii) can the divorcee make a second unconditional marital vow in all moral seriousness? To the last question I answer yes. I argue that the divorce process is so disorienting – to use Amy Harbin’s term – as to transform the divorcee and therefore partly release her from the original vow. Arguing this will require a specific understanding of personal identity and change.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Marital Dissolution

Emotional Divorce: Similarities and Differences According to the Position Occupied

Marriage, Divorce, and Cohabitation: A Reading of Norwegian Fortune-Teller I Ching by Henning Hai Lee Yang

This article was inspired by the Guardian columnist Zoe Williams, who entitled her 2018 article ‘I do, again: there is nothing as deadly serious as a second marriage’.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/may/05/i-do-again-there-is-nothing-as-deadly-serious-as-a-second-marriage [accessed July 2019]

See, for example, Brake ( 2012 ) and Chambers ( 2017 ).

Perhaps the statement of good faith could be accompanied by something like the following text, for which I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer:

I commit to a life with you, through ups and downs and changes of all kinds, but I recognize that life is complicated and I can’t entirely control what we face together or how we grow in response to challenges. If it becomes clear that our relationship changes so much that there is little joy in our connection or if our personal journeys do not coincide, as much as we had hoped for and worked for otherwise, then our promise can be broken.

Archer and Lopez-Cantero (this volume) discuss the example of falling out of love as a disorienting experience, and obviously a lot of what they say will be relevant to my discussion. However, I incline toward Mendus in seeing deep qualitative differences between being in love and being married, and therefore between falling out of love and divorcing. As I will be discussing below, falling out of love can be explained ‘away’ as the unfortunate end of a discrete project ; divorcing can amount to the death of part of one’s self .

In the next section I will discuss Brake’s distinction between a ‘promise’ and a ‘commitment’. Mendus seems to consider them more or less synonymous.

This situation is also discussed by Brake ( 2011 ) in Section 2 of her article. Brake is careful to note (p. 26) the difficulty in comparing marriage to a contract with implicit conditions.

In the same line of thinking, many would see pre-nuptial contracts as a supremely rational kind of insurance, especially for individuals with wealth pre-dating the marriage.

An anonymous reviewer raised an interesting scenario. I declared Tereza childless to keep things simple. What if Tereza enters the marriage with an existing unconditional commitment to another person, for example to a living child? However devoted she is to her fiancé, her wedding vow must surely carry an implicit condition that, if eventually forced to choose, she will choose the child. And he will probably understand that, even without her telling him. In my original version, the non-parent Tereza enters the marriage in a spirit of making it work, whatever the cost to herself; but that spirit would not work if the costs are borne by her child. And while the non-parent Tereza does not attend to the possibility of future failure while making her unconditional vow, the parent Tereza brings her child along to the wedding itself, and the child’s present and future welfare will be uppermost in Tereza’s mind.

In the same way one might see divorce as an event, one might have a purely passive conception of love. One day the love will dissolve, and that will be an event which we will just have to deal with by deciding on the course of action most likely to generate happiness in the future. However, Brake herself allows for a more sophisticated view of love which she calls “smart love” (p. 32). Love is actually “complex, trainable, shot through with reason and belief” (ibid.). Still, Brake suggests that it is still uncontrollable enough to disqualify one from whole-heartedly promising to love; whereas I would see it as controllable enough to promise.

In his famous discussion of moral luck, Bernard Williams ( 1981 ) uses the example of Anna Karenina (Tolstoy’s eponymous heroine), who abandons her husband for Vronsky. At the time of the abandonment, writes Williams, it was not clear whether she was objectively justified or not; once the affair fails, however, the abandonment is retroactively ‘unjustified’ (Williams’s word). I disagree with Williams here. That the original abandonment was unjustified is Anna ’s conclusion, and we can certainly understand why she might conclude that. However, that does not mean that Williams has to accept her conclusion.

I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this objection.

This is to be distinguished from the straightforward case where the husband would have been actually killed in combat, and the wife would have thereby been fully released from her wedding vow. Although even here, we can imagine a woman who considers herself still married to her dead husband, and who refuses to engage in any new intimate relationships precisely out of wedding-vow loyalty. Even though the wedding vow stipulates only “as long as you both shall live,” she may well believe that he is still alive in her heart, or in heaven, or just ‘somewhere’. Only a fool would call such an attitude delusional, and refuse to accord it moral respect.

It is true that the breakdown of a morally serious marriage need not be traumatic, and therefore need not result in transformation or disorientation, if both parties have the maturity and decency and self-confidence to admit that they no longer belong together. Again, I am limiting my discussion to traumatic (but faultless) divorce cases such as Tereza’s.

Harbin (p. 155) stresses the importance of ‘interpreters’, close friends and family who can help the disoriented individual avoid being overwhelmed by the disorientation. As part of this, she adds, “what feelings an individual can have depend to some extent on what feelings they are enabled to express to others” (p. 156).

Note: Harbin’s ‘resolvism’ should be distinguished from the ‘resolve’ which Mendus described as essential to marriage.

I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for emphasising this.

In passing, I am taking a not uncontroversial view of factual significance as shifting in time. Tereza remembers the facts of the first meeting with her husband. But when she fell in love, she blessed the day; during the divorce, she cursed the day; ten years after the divorce, she is bittersweet about the day – throughout, the remembered facts remain the same. Importantly, I am taken such perspectival significance as objective in the sense of discoverable and serious. There is then a further question of whether the final significance of a fact in one’s life, within the deathbed perspective, is somehow ‘more accurate’ than the earlier significance; unfortunately I do not have space to discuss that.

For a very recent exploration of this kind of ‘biographical perspective’, see Golub ( 2019 ). I am hoping that the reader will accept the loose Nietzschean spirit of my argument, without picking me up on the many assumptions I am making about causality. It can be notoriously difficult for therapists to identify causal influences on character change.

Brake E (2011) Is Divorce Promise-Breaking?. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 14(1), 23-39. (reprinted in Brake (2012))

Brake E (2012) Minimizing Marriage. Marriage, Morality and the Law. Oxford University Press

Chambers C (2017) Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State, Oxford University Press

Golub C (2019) Personal Value, Biographical Identity, and Retrospective Attitudes. Australas J Philos 97(1):72–85

Article   Google Scholar  

Harbin A (2016) Disorientation and moral life. Oxford University Press

Mendus S (1984) Marital faithfulness. Philosophy 59(228):243–252

Paul LA (2014) Transformative Experience. Oxford University Press

Solomon R C (2003) On fate and fatalism. Philosophy East and West, 435-454

Williams B (1981). Moral Luck. Moral Luck. Cambridge University Press

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland

Christopher Cowley

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher Cowley .

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cowley, C. Divorce, Disorientation, and Remarriage. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 23 , 531–544 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-10036-4

Download citation

Accepted : 29 September 2019

Published : 19 October 2019

Issue Date : August 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-10036-4

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Disorientation
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• < Previous

Home > Faculty Scholarship > Articles > 1940

Marriage, Morals, and the Law: No-Fault divorce and Moral Discourse

Carl E. Schneider , University of Michigan Law School Follow

Document Type

Publication date.

In this Essay, I want to reflect on no fault-divorce and the social attitudes that underlie it. In particular, I want to consider that reform in light of an article I wrote some years ago entitled Moral Discourse and the Transformation of American Family Law . There I argued that in recent years the language of American family law has changed notably: today family law issues are decreasingly discussed in the language of morality. In other words, legal institutions have decreasingly talked about those issues in moral terms. Rather, they have tended to avoid handling some moral issues altogether-often by transferring responsibility for such decisions to the people the law once regulated-or to discuss those issues in other than moral terms. This argument might be misunderstood in one respect. I am not suggesting-I have never suggested-"that lawmakers' decisions are necessarily less moral, that family law is necessarily deprived of a moral basis, or that lawmakers may not have moral reasons for avoiding moral discourse." Quite obviously, much of this change can be defended in quite conventional moral terms-as an expression, for instance, of a number of standard liberal views. My point,·rather, is that "the terms lawmakers use in explaining (and presumably in thinking about) their work are decreasingly drawn from the vocabulary of morals and are increasingly drawn from the discourse of economics, psychology, public policy studies, medicine, or from those aspects of legal doctrine which speak in other than moral terms." Thus the language of morals is being displaced by other discourses or even by silence.

Recommended Citation

Schneider, Carl E. "Marriage, Morals, and the Law: No-Fault Divorce and Moral Discourse (Symposium: Twenty-Five Years of Divorce Revolution)." Utah L. Rev , no. 2 (1994): 503-85.

Since April 26, 2018

Included in

Family Law Commons , Law and Society Commons

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines

Submissions

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

152 Brilliant Divorce Essay Topics & Examples

For those who are studying law or social sciences, writing about divorce is a common task. Separation is a complicated issue that can arise from many different situations and lead to adverse outcomes. In this article we gathered an ultimate list of topics about divorce and gathered some tips to when working on the paper.

Christian Ethics on Divorce: Balancing Forgiveness Verses Prudence

2018, Jumuga Journal of Education,Oral Studies, and Human Sciences (JJEOSHS)[email protected] Volume 1, No.1, December 2018

The institution of marriage, originally started and blessed by God, is facing the threat of desacralization, disrepute, and collapse. Divorce is now emerging as the leading intervention to marital conflicts. A greater concern however is that among the people that choose divorce and remarriage are Christian leaders and clergymen and clergywomen. Their decision on accepting divorce is based on their understanding that Jesus and Paul gave some reasons and excuses why and how someone would take divorce and remarriage as a choice. This paper argues that the biggest factor at play, is the worldviews that people have on marriage, something which guides judgement, and determine options that someone takes when they are faced with extended family row. The people that hold the " I need you " or 'you needed me' mindset, would either choose divorce as the only option, or decided to endure the partners. This paper argues that both of these are ramification of entering marriage with unstable worldview. The people that enter marriage with the 'I was wanting, I am made whole by you' mindset, are likely to view extended marriage row as something positive, and pray for God to help them overcome the trial, in order to come out victorious.

Related Papers

Anthony DeRosse

www.academia.edu

Fermin Lopez

In this paper, I put forward a soteriological interpretation for the two “exception clauses” found in Christ’s teaching on divorce in the Gospel of Matthew. This interpretation, unlike many other interpretations that have been advanced for these clauses, is fully consistent with Christ’s and the Apostle Paul’s teaching on divorce. I will argue that both Jesus and the Apostle Paul taught that references to “divorce” in the scriptures, including Old Testament scriptures, means “separation”, not the dissolution of marriage as is often asserted by evangelical theologians, and that this interpretation is the only way that all the scriptures that reference divorce can be cogently harmonised. The interpretation builds on the work of a minority of theologians who argue that the word “divorce” in scripture, means “separation”: a temporary discontinuation of married life, not its dissolution. This understanding is based fundamentally on a covenantal view of marriage; a relationship that mirrors the permanent and unbreakable marriage covenant between God and His people described in the Old Testament and evidenced by Christ’s marriage like relationship with the Church (Eph. 5:22-32). The interpretation is also consistent with the metaphor illustrating God’s dealings with His “adulterous wife” – Israel, as described throughout the Old Testament, but particularly in the prophets. My thesis is that there is a soteriological reason for the Matthean “exception clauses” which has hitherto been overlooked. The “exception clauses” provide a justification for the temporary separation that God experienced when the Word made flesh (John 1:1-17) was separated from the Father at the crucifixion, and instead of providing a “lawful” reason to terminate marriage, as is often asserted, they in fact reinforce the permanence of the marriage covenant (Jer. 31:31–34) as described in scripture, revealing important truths about God’s plan of salvation for mankind. This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part I demonstrate that Jesus and the Apostle Paul unambiguously taught the indissolubility of the marriage covenant and that this teaching is fully consistent with Old Testament scripture. The second part of this paper describes the implications that flow from this teaching. In particular, I demonstrate that the “exception clauses” both affirm the indissolubility of the marriage covenant and reveal important truths about God’s plan of salvation for mankind.

David Instone-Brewer

Joe Sprinkle

biblicalstudies.org.uk

Delano V Palmer

Sandile S Khumalo

I hereby declare that this assignment/project is my own work. All material used from books or journals or internet sources have been correctly quoted and referenced. I fully understand the policy on plagiarism as found in the prospectus of the College. If I am found guilty of plagiarism even due to negligence or ignorance, I will receive a failure grade for the paper or for the whole course; and may face additional academic penalties that could include dismissal from the College. Abstract The Christology of Polygamy and the Marriage covenant

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Subscribe Now

[OPINION] On divorce and Filipino values

Already have Rappler+? Sign in to listen to groundbreaking journalism.

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

“Filipino values. Family values. But what do we really value? Life, safety, and sanity through divorce? Or that superficial image of a supposedly ideal marriage?”

Em Abuton is a mother of four girls who describes herself as a “staunchly pro-divorce advocate.” In a piece for Rappler , she minces no words for the “hypocrisy” of religious leaders. She takes them to task for advising couples to stay together despite domestic violence when, in fact, the clergy themselves are unmarried. She also believes the latter is unjust for denying the abused party – often the woman – “the right to be totally free from the abuser.” 

Like many other Filipinos, she’s upset that “Filipino” and “family” values have become a convenient excuse to neglect the welfare of abused women. And we have reason to believe she’s not alone.

Since 2005, public support for divorce legislation has been growing consistently. In fact, according to the latest data from SWS, 53% of Filipinos (as opposed to 32%) agree that “married couples who have already separated and cannot reconcile anymore should be allowed to divorce so they can get legally married again.” (I wrote about this trend in another piece: Is the Philippines ready for divorce? )

Spanish period

To this day, there’s no divorce law in the country except for Muslim Filipinos, who are covered by the Code of Muslim Personal Laws. For context, relative divorce or legal separation was allowed for Filipinos during the Spanish period. It was not until during the American occupation that the first civil divorce law, based on adultery or concubinage, was made possible. 

Marital dissolution was repealed, however, when the Philippines gained its independence, and the Civil Code had to be revised in 1950. In that revised version, legal separation replaced absolute divorce. As historians of that period observed, the move was prompted by strong resistance from the Catholic Church. In 1987, legal separation was retained in the Family Code under Executive Order 209 and remains in force. 

In the past three decades, renewed efforts have been made to legalize divorce in the country. A series of proposals were initiated in 1999 and then in 2001. Many others followed suit over the years, but none has been successful. In 2023, an unprecedented turn occurred when a Senate committee approved a consolidated measure. 

This, however, may have raised hopes too soon. Just last month, the Philippine senators’ counterparts in the House of Representatives sent their own divorce bill back to the original committee. Its primary author, Representative Edcel Lagman, “cried foul.” In his view, the move was only meant to “derail the proceedings.”

Delaying forces? House panel approves divorce bill, again

Marriage, a Filipino value?

What is also striking about Abuton’s piece is that it calls into question the repetitive claim that marriage is a Filipino value. But is it? 

The claim is not new. In the 1920s, when absolute divorce became the law of the land, Jose Lopez-Vito, Jr., a prominent lawyer, criticized the Supreme Court. In a piece published by the Philippine Law Journal, he disagreed with its conclusion that marital dissolution effectively repealed legal separation. In his view, the latter should have been retained because marriage was not only a sacred vow. “The sanctity of the family,” argued Lopez-Vito, Jr. “is one of the greatest prides of our race.” 

In 1960, Jorge Coquia, another prominent lawyer, castigated his women colleagues who participated in the convention of the Federacion Internacional de Abagadas (FIDA) in Manila. The women rallied behind FIDA’s resolution in favor of a standard divorce law worldwide. Published in another scholarly journal, here’s what he said: “The matter of absolute divorce has no place among the accepted mores, customs and family traditions of the Philippines…[and] is not consonance with the moral and religious convictions of Filipinos.”

Were these lawyers justified? 

From the perspective of the majority, one can argue that they were. In a way, their legal gravitas reinforced the Catholic Church’s position. As I mentioned above, the Catholic Church in the mid-20 th century appealed to the framers of the Civil Code in the name of the public. Writing around that time, Deogracias Reyes made the following observation: “The code reaffirms in many of its provisions the Filipino tradition of family solidarity, further strengthened by the Catholic faith of the people.”

No more majority

Can the same argument be made in 2024? 

According to the survey data I mentioned above, the majority of Filipinos are now in favor of a divorce law. This means the religious sector can no longer rely on the majority to rally behind it.

I think this explains why the religious resistance to marital dissolution now portrays it as a moral evil that threatens Filipino values. This is a different take altogether.

For my ongoing book project, I’m documenting how the religious rhetoric now portrays divorce as a moral evil because it destroys the Filipino family. And the family is what defines Filipinoness. This take is no longer majoritarian. Instead, what we have here is an essentialist argument. One priest has this to say: “Divorce is…anti-family, anti-marriage, and anti-children.”

It’s worth reiterating that in this worldview, the family is heteronormative. This explains why the religious community has fought tooth and nail over the SOGIE Equality Bill. From this vantage point, divorce and homosexuality are lumped together as facets of a “culture of death” that they believe threatens Philippine society.

Moral fortitude

Since divorce is a moral evil, the logical recourse is moral fortitude.

The religious discourse expresses this in different ways. Couples must fight for their marriage, rediscover their faith in God, be humble enough to admit their mistakes, forgive each other, and stick to one another for the sake of their children. 

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines makes a strong statement: “If you cannot keep the promise, do not make it [at] all. Do not claim its privileges while refusing to own up to its demands.”

I get that it’s a moral concern. But portraying divorce only as a moral evil sidetracks many other issues. 

Divorce, for example, is also a matter of mental health, as some scholars have rightly pointed out. One must also mention that legal separation does not allow parties to get married again. This means that their legal spouses may retaliate by charging them with adultery or concubinage if they enter into another relationship. This warning comes from no less than the Philippine Commission on Women. It also reminds the public that children born out of these new relationships are not considered legitimate. 

Divorce, I have no doubt, is a moral concern. Many Filipinos, after all, are still of the view that marriage is worth fighting for. 

But if this morality is tied to Filipino values (or Filipinoness), what does it ultimately make of those who suffer among us? Are they not Filipinos too?

I suppose one more question must be asked as our society debates divorce. Is it not Filipino too to “build a just and humane society”? 

It must be. It’s right there in the very first sentence of the Philippine Constitution. – Rappler.com

Jayeel Cornelio, PhD is a visiting scholar at the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. On sabbatical from the Ateneo de Manila University, where he is Professor of Development Studies, he is working on his book on religion and politics in the Philippines. Follow him on X @jayeel_cornelio . 

Please abide by Rappler's commenting guidelines .

Thanks to Prof. Jayeel Cornelio for his educational and enlightening ideas on Divorce. Most importantly, it relates to Filipino values and building a just and humane society. I eagerly wait for his following articles expounding on this relationship. I also wish he could work on the origin of the love of family as a value and how such value becomes one of the Filipino values. Again, thank you, Prof. Cornelio.

Clarification: divorce and how it relates to building a just and humane society. Advance thanks, Prof. Cornelio.

How does this make you feel?

Related Topics

Recommended stories, {{ item.sitename }}, {{ item.title }}, catholic church, olympic ceremony’s ‘last supper’ sketch never meant to disrespect, says paris 2024.

Paris Games organizers: It was Greek god satire, not ‘Last Supper’ parody

[The Wide Shot] Peace be with China

[OPINION] A critique of the CBCP pastoral statement on divorce 

WATCH: A Catholic archbishop sails West Philippine Sea to pray for China

Divorce advocates to lawmakers: Listen to us, not just research

For OFWs, distance makes broken marriages harder to fight for

[DASH of SAS] Even after you leave, you are not free

[Rappler’s Best] Divorced from reality

[OPINION] Love wins – a lawyer’s take on the House divorce bill

Faith and Spirituality

[the wide shot] journalism 101, the jesuit way.

Cebu Archbishop to couples seeking divorce: ‘Have you tried drawing closer to God?’

Your sanctuary calls: Churches serve as refuge for disaster victims

The marriage debate, in online sentiment and in statistics

Divorce bill hurdles Senate committee level

Gay marriage case could bring gold rush to Indian wedding industry

How to avoid toxic perfectionism when planning a wedding

Checking your Rappler+ subscription...

Upgrade to Rappler+ for exclusive content and unlimited access.

Why is it important to subscribe? Learn more

You are subscribed to Rappler+

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

When Love Hurts – Mental and Physical Health Among Recently Divorced Danes

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The last decades of research have consistently found strong associations between divorce and adverse health outcomes among adults. However, limitations of a majority of this research include (a) lack of “real-time” research, i.e., research employing data collected very shortly after juridical divorce where little or no separation periods have been effectuated, (b) research employing thoroughly validated and population-normed measures against which study results can be compared, and (c) research including a comprehensive array of previously researched sociodemographic- and divorce-related variables. The current cross-sectional study, including 1,856 recently divorced Danes, was designed to bridge these important gaps in the literature. Mental and physical health were measured using the Short Form 36 (SF-36)-2. Analyses included correlational analyses, t- test comparisons, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The study found that the health-related quality of life of Danish divorcees was significantly worse than the comparative background population immediately following divorce. Across gender, higher levels of divorce conflict were found to predict worse mental health, and worse physical health for women, even when controlling for other socio-demographic variables and divorce characteristics. Among men, lower age and higher income predicted better physical health, while more children, more previous divorces, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict predicted better mental health. Among women, higher income, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict predicted better physical health while higher income, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict predicted better mental health. The findings underscore the relevance of providing assistance to divorcees who experience higher levels of divorce conflict immediately following divorce, in seeking to reduce potential long-term negative health effects of divorce.

Introduction

The last 20 years of research have consistently found strong associations between divorce and adverse health outcomes among adults. Generally, divorcees report poorer physical and mental health and more symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and social isolation than the general population ( Amato, 2000 , 2010 ; Kessing et al., 2003 ; Hewitt and Turrell, 2011 ; Hewitt et al., 2012 ; Hald et al., 2020b ). Furthermore, divorce is associated with more frequent hospitalization ( Nielsen et al., 2014 ), substance use ( Waite et al., 2009 ), higher suicide rates ( Kposowa, 2000 ), lower levels of psychological well-being ( Bracke et al., 2010 ; Colman et al., 2012 ), and greater overall mortality risk ( Kposowa, 2000 ; Sbarra and Nietert, 2009 ). However, four limitations relate to a significant part of this research.

First, often studies include only one or two health-related outcomes per study (e.g., stress and/or depression) (e.g., Lindström, 2009 ; Hewitt et al., 2012 ; Knöpfli et al., 2016 ). While this is important in mapping out specific effects of divorce, it limits the ability to gain insight into more comprehensive physical and mental health profiles among divorce populations. These could be important for more accurate and comprehensive assessments and profiling of the effects of divorce on health. Second, most countries in the world require separation periods before juridical divorce is granted. This means that divorce studies able to employ “real-time” research are scarce and there has been a call for such studies (e.g., Thuen, 2001 ; Cipric et al., 2020 ). The concept of “real-time” research usually refers to the collection of data among divorcees with little or no separation periods before formal juridical divorce ( Hald et al., 2020a ). When studying health effects of divorce, this may be especially important since many health outcomes related to divorce may be sensitive to a “time heals effect,” whereby negative effects of divorce naturally decline over time ( Amato, 2010 ; Sander et al., 2020 ). Therefore, current research on adverse health effects of divorce may, in fact, underestimate negative health effects of divorce as data have often been collected after a divorce that was preceded by significant periods of separation and thus is likely to be subject to the “time heals effect” ( Sander et al., 2020 ). Third, studies employing thoroughly validated and population-normed measures are few. Validated measures are needed for accurate assessment of the health outcomes studied. However, these assessments may benefit from contextualization by having background population norms against which the results can be directly compared. This allows for more direct insights into the degree to which divorcees may differ from background population norms and thus the relative impact of the divorce on health. Fourth, studies are needed that include a more comprehensive array of previously researched sociodemographic- and divorce-related predictor or explanatory variables of mental and physical health. This would allow for a more thorough assessment of the individual and combined effect of these variables on mental and physical health. The current study was designed to bridge these four important gaps in health research related to divorce.

Divorce theory and divorce research suggest that there are sociodemographic variables and divorce-related characteristics that may moderate the effects of divorce on mental and physical health. Theoretically, Amato’s Divorce-Stress-Readjustment perspective (DSR; Amato, 2000 ) suggests that adverse effects of divorce depend on a number of risk and protective factors experienced during and following the divorce process. Examples of risk factors include lower standards of living, loss of benefits associated with marriage, and conflict with the former partner, whereas examples of protective factors include having a new romantic partner, adequate income, and holding positive views about the divorce. According to the DSR, it is the interplay between risk and protective factors that may be important in determining the effects of divorce on mental and physical health ( Amato, 2010 ).

From an empirical perspective, studies suggest that lower socioeconomic status, being unemployed, lower levels of education, and lower family income ( Barrett, 2000 ; Simon, 2002 ; Symoens et al., 2013b ) are associated with lower mental and physical health following divorce. In addition, younger age has been found to be associated with lower mental health following divorce ( Bulloch et al., 2017 ). In relation to divorce characteristics, mutual divorce agreement initiation ( Weiss, 1976 ; Gray and Silver, 1990 ; Wang and Amato, 2000 ; Sweeney and Horwitz, 2001 ; Sakraida, 2008 ; Cohen and Finzi-Dottan, 2012 ; Symoens et al., 2013a ), having a new partner ( Mastekaasa, 1994 ; Amato, 2000 ; Øygard, 2004 ; Blekesaune, 2008 ; Kulik and Heine-Cohen, 2011 ; Symoens et al., 2013b ; Symoens et al., 2014 ) and lower levels of divorce-related conflict ( Symoens et al., 2014 ; Petren et al., 2017 ) have been found to be associated with better mental and physical health. Both empirically and from an applied point of view, divorce conflict has been found to adversely affect or accelerate declines in mental health among divorcees. While the cross-sectional nature of the current study does not allow for investigation of the impact of divorce conflict on mental health over time, it does allow for an independent assessment of the explanatory value of divorce conflict on mental health, accounting for basic sociodemographic variables and other divorce-related characteristics. Compared with previous research, this allows for a more thorough and “independent” investigation of divorce conflict on mental health immediately following divorce.

The current study took place in Denmark, providing a unique perspective on divorce and divorce-related processes. First, in Denmark, there is high societal acceptance of divorce ( Uggla and Andersson, 2018 ), and in general, divorce is not associated with societal stigma, as it is in many other parts of the world. Second, Denmark is a country with high levels of equality, both in terms of gender equality ( European Institute for Gender Equality, 2018 ) and income equality ( OECD, 2018 ). As such, Denmark offers a unique context in which to study whether sociodemographic and divorce-related factors predict post-divorce mental and physical health.

Based on the above, the current study sought to investigate mental and physical health among recently divorced Danes using a well-known, comprehensive, and population-normed mental and physical health measure. Further, the study sought to examine the explanatory value of a comprehensive array of previously identified sociodemographic variables and divorce-related characteristics on overall mental and physical health. Finally, the study sought to compare overall mental and physical health to relevant population norms. Accordingly, the following two research questions and one study hypothesis guided the study investigation:

• RQ1: What is the mental and physical health among recently divorced individuals and how does it compare to population norms?
• RQ2: What is the explanatory value of sociodemographic variables (i.e., age, number of children, income, education) and divorce-related characteristics (i.e., marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, new partner status, and divorce conflict) on overall mental and physical health among recently divorced individuals?
• H1: Divorce conflict will significantly add to the explanatory value of mental health after accounting for basic sociodemographic variables (i.e., age, number of children, income, education) and divorce-related characteristics (i.e., marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, and new partner status).

Materials and Methods

Participants.

The study sample comprised 1,856 participants of which 66% were women. The average age of women was 44.65 years ( SD = 8.34), while for men, it was 46.66 years ( SD = 9.31). The majority of participants had at least a medium educational level and earned at least the national average salary (see Table 1 ). The majority of the sample (88.3%) were parents, with an average of 1.88 ( SD = 0.99) children per participant. The average marriage duration for men was 12.22 years ( SD = 8.11) and for women 13.0 ( SD = 7.98), and for approximately 88% of the sample, this was their first divorce. A majority of women (52%) reported to have initiated the divorce, with 29% of men reporting to be divorce initiators. The majority of both male and female participants did not have new partners following their divorce (65% men, 64% women). The mean legal divorce duration before survey completion was 4.47 days ( SD = 6.97) for men and 5.23 ( SD = 7.66) days for women. Of note, there were some gender differences in sociodemographic and divorce-related characteristics. Specifically, compared to men, women were younger, had been married slightly longer, were more highly educated, earned less than men, had initiated the divorce more often, and had a different partner status than men [age ( t (1854) = 4.74, p < 0.001); duration of marriage ( t (1854) = −1.972, p = 0.049); education (χ 2 = 32.61, p < 0.001); income (χ 2 = 107.41, p < 0.001); initiator status (χ 2 = 90.50, p < 0.001); new partner (χ 2 = 14.82, p = 0.002)].

Participant demographics ( N = 1,856).

Data on all people who divorced in Denmark during the study period were obtained from Statistics Denmark and compared to the study sample. The study sample was found to be representative in terms of age, income, and marriage duration ( p > 0.05). There were statistically significant differences between participants and the comparison population in terms of gender (more women participated: χ 2 = 208.45, p < 0.001), educational attainment (study participants were more highly educated: χ 2 = 1135.23, p < 0.001), and the number of previous divorces [participants had on average fewer previous divorces than the average Danish divorcee: t (1855) = −8.47, p < 0.001].

During the study period (January 2016 to January 2018), those seeking divorce in Denmark initiated formal legal divorce and separation procedures by submitting an application to the Danish State Administration (DSA). Legal divorce was granted immediately when there was a mutual agreement to the marital dissolution. However, if there was disagreement regarding the divorce itself or its terms, a 6-month separation period was instituted, after which divorce was granted even in the absence of mutual agreement. The DSA reports that approximately 30% of couples underwent the 6-month separation period. The average processing time required by the DSA to issue divorce decrees was 2–3 weeks.

Invitations to the present study were sent by the DSA along with the divorce decree. The invitation letter described the 12-month Randomized Controlled Trial intervention study entitled “Cooperation after Divorce” that sought to investigate the effects of a digital intervention platform called “Cooperation after Divorce (CAD)” on divorcees’ mental and physical health. As the DSA sent out invitations, we were unable to send re-invitations to those who did not respond to the initial invitation sent out by the DSA. Those who completed the baseline survey received invitations from the intervention platform to complete surveys at 3, 6, and 12 months; for each of these time points, two reminder e-mails were sent out, one after 3 days and one after 14 days, if no response had been provided.

Cooperation after Divorce covers three main areas: (1) the divorce, (2) children, and (3) cooperation following divorce, employing 17 learning modules delivered through an online platform. This paper reports only the baseline results of the study, therefore, please also see Hald et al. (2020a) for a more thorough description of the CAD platform. The letter also described the procedure for participation, which consisted of clicking on a web-link in the invitation letter, provide informed consent, and respond to the baseline questionnaire anonymously. The research received approval from the Danish Data Protection Agency and was exempt from further ethical evaluations following the rules and regulations as set forth by the Scientific Ethical Committees of Denmark.

The exact response rate is not possible to report because the DSA could not provide the precise number of study invitations sent during the study period. There were 32,487 legal divorces in Denmark during the RCT enrollment period; however, it is unknown whether all individuals who divorced received an invitation along with their divorce decree. In total, 1,882 people began the study and due to impossible or invalid responses, 26 were excluded (i.e., those who did not report gender, reported to be married less than 1 day, or to have married the same year as they were born). Thus, 1,856 participants were included in the final analytical study sample.

Sociodemographic Variables

(a) Age at divorce was measured in years and months. (b) Sexual identity was determined by answering: “Are you a man or a woman?” with the response options: 1 = “Man” 2 = “Woman.” (c) Education level was assessed by answering: “What is the highest education you have completed?” with the following response options: 1 = “low level of education” (e.g., primary school, high school, business high school, vocational education), 2 = “medium level of education” (e.g., medium-length tertiary education, bachelor’s degree), and 3 = “high level of education” (e.g., master’s degree or higher). (d) Income was measured with the question “What is your monthly income before tax?” in Danish Crowns (1 USD = 6.35 DKK). The response options were: 1 = “Below 10,000DKK,” 2 = “10–20,000DKK,” 3 = “20–30,000DKK,” 4 = “30–40,000DKK,” 5 = “40–50,000DKK,” 6 = “50–60,000DKK,” 7 = “60–70,000DKK,” 8 = “70–80,000DKK,” 9 = “More than 80,000DKK.” These categories were reduced for descriptive purposes for Table 1 so that 1–3 = “Below average,” 2–4 = “Average,” 5+= “Above average”; however, in all analyses the original scale was used. (e) The number of children was obtained by asking how many children participants had from 0 to 8.

Divorce-Related Variables

(a) Marriage duration was calculated in years and months from marriage date to divorce date; (b) legal divorce duration was calculated in days from the legal divorce date to survey response date; (c) number of divorces was obtained by asking, “How many time have you divorced?” with response options including 1 = “One time,” 2 = “Two times,” 3 = “Three times,” and 4 = “More than three times”; (e) divorce initiator status was ascertained with the question “Who initiated your divorce” and 1 = “Me,” 2 = “Mostly me,” 3 = “We mutually agreed,” 4 = “Mostly my former spouse,” 5 = “My former spouse,” 6 “Not sure.” Initiator status responses were reduced so that 1–2 = “Me,” 3 = “We mutually agreed,” 4–5 = “My former spouse,” and 6 = “System missing” [only seven participants (0.4%) responded “not sure”]; (f) New partner status was obtained with the question “Do you or your ex have a new partner?” with the following response options: 1 = “Yes, we both have a new partner,” 2 = “No, none of us have a new partner,” 3 = “I have a new partner, but not my ex,” 4 = “My ex has a new partner, but not me”; (g) Divorce conflict was assessed employing the six-item self-report Divorce Conflict Scale (DCS). The DCS measures six dimensions of divorce-related conflict: communication, co-parenting, global assessment of former spouse, negative and pervasive negative exchanges and hostile, insecure emotional environment, and self-perceived conflict ( Hald et al., 2020d ). The internal consistency of the DCS scale was high (α = 0.88).

Physical and Mental Health

The second version of the Short Form 36 (SF-36) Health Assessment was used for the core outcomes of this study. The SF-36 is a 36-item self-report measure that is a widely used instrument to assess health-related quality of life over the previous 4 weeks among general populations and diverse patient groups ( Maruish, 2011 ). The instrument includes the following eight domains which are measured using 35 items: physical functioning, role physical (role participation with physical health problems), bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional (role participation with emotional health problems), and mental health. The final item is not included in the domains subscales and addresses self-evaluation health transition. The responses are given with a Likert scale or a yes/no format. Domain scores are reported in 0–100 transformed scores and t -scores that are calculated from the raw scores and higher scores indicate better health status (see Maruish, 2011 for more information). The physical health and mental health summary variables are calculated using all eight health domains based on their relative factor analytical weights. Many language versions of the SF-36 exist and the instrument has been determined to be a valid and reliable instrument for a wide range of populations ( Bjorner et al., 1998 ; Maruish, 2011 ). In this study, all of the eight health scales demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.85–0.93).

Data Analyses

Missing data were less than 5% for all variables in the present paper, which is below the proportion of missingness that may bias results ( Schafer, 1999 ; Bennett, 2001 ; Dong and Peng, 2013 ). Thus, the data were omitted “listwise” in analyses. For the legal divorce duration variable, outliers were changed to missing values using the moderately conservative ± 2.5 times the median absolute deviation (MAD) threshold, as recommended by Leys et al. (2013) . To assess gender differences, sociodemographic and divorce-related characteristics were compared using two-sample t -tests and chi-square tests.

Prior to any other data analyses, a rake weight was constructed and applied to the data. The rake weight was based on gender, education, and previous number of divorces and adjusted for sample representativeness (see section “Participants”). When constructing rake weights, a set of variables for which the distribution is known are chosen, and the statistical program creates weights for each case until the sample distribution aligns with the population for those variables. The resultant weight was applied to the data. Thus, all following data analyses (correlations, comparisons to norms, cut-off score comparison, and hierarchical regressions) reflect results with the weight applied.

One-sample t -tests were employed to compare our sample with the available Danish normative data from the Danish SF-36 user’s manual, which comprise a random population sample of 4,080 Danish adults (52% women) from the SF-36 Health Assessment Danish Manual study (for more information regarding this normative population sample, see also Bjorner et al., 1998 ). For comparisons, the SF-36 0–100 transformed scale scores were used.

Pearson correlation analyses were used for assessing bivariate correlations between variables. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to assess the independent contribution to the explanation of the variance SF-36 physical and mental health summary t -scores. In a first step, age, number of children, income, and education were entered as predictors; in a second step, marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, and new partner status were entered as predictors. DCS scores were entered as a predictor in the third step. This approach allows for an assessment of the unique contributions of sets of variables (i.e., demographics and divorce-related variables), and specifically, allows for an assessment of the unique contribution of divorce conflict, beyond the contribution of demographics and divorce-related factors.

When compared with Danish normative data, male participants reported lower role physical scores [ t (878) = −9.38, p < 0.001, d = 0.32], worse general health [ t (878) = −5.66, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.19], lower vitality [ t (875) = −31.88, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.08], decreased social functioning [ t (878) = −23.51, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.79], lower role emotional scores [ t (878) = −25.63, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.87], and worse mental health [ t (875) = −40.79, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.38], but better physical functioning [ t (879) = 6.66, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.23] and lower levels of bodily pain [ t (878) = 2.34, p = 0.020, Cohen’s d = 0.08], than the Danish normative male population.

Statistically significant differences were found on the SF-36 domains for women. Compared with the Danish normative female population, female participants reported lower role physical scores [ t (880) = −3.00, p = 0.003, d = 0.10], worse general health [ t (883) = −7.25, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.24], lower vitality [ t (878) = −33.00, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.11], lower social functioning scores [ t (880) = −23.19, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.78], decreased role emotional capacity [ t (880) = −25.86, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.87], and worse mental health [ t (878) = −38.31, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.29], but better physical functioning [ t (883) = 9.94, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.33] and lower levels of bodily pain [ t (880) = 2.92, p = 0.004, Cohen’s d = 0.10] (see Figures 1 , ​ ,2 2 ).

SF-36 physical health domain means compared to normative data.

SF-36 mental health domain means compared to normative data.

Comparison cut-off scores were created such that those with t -scores below 44 were categorized as poor functioning, those with t -scores between 44 and 56 (i.e., average) were categorized as normal functioning, and those with t -scores above 56 (i.e., above) were categorized as superior functioning. The comparisons revealed that for the intervention group, 8.3% fell below the cut-score on physical health (normal = 23.8% and superior = 68%) and 73.6% fell below the cut-score on mental health (normal = 19.9% and superior = 6.6%). Similarly, for the control group, 8.0% fell below the cut-score on physical health (normal = 22.5% and superior = 69.5%) and 72.6% fell below the cut-score on mental health (normal = 23.8% and superior = 3.6%).

Among men, bivariate correlation analyses demonstrated that lower age, higher income, higher education, shorter duration marriages, fewer previous divorces, and lower mental health scores were significantly associated with better physical health ( p < 0.05). Among women, lower age, higher income, higher educational level, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, lower divorce conflict, and lower mental health scores were significantly associated with better physical health ( p < 0.05). Among men, higher age, longer marriage duration, more previous divorces, initiator and new partner status, and lower divorce conflict scores were significantly associated with better mental health, while for women higher income, fewer previous divorces, initiator status, and lower divorce conflict scores were significantly associated with better mental health ( p < 0.05; see also Table 2 ).

Correlations among sociodemographic variables, divorce conflict scale scores, physical and mental health summary scores ( N = 1856, men n = 617, women n = 1239).

Force enter hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to assess whether socio-demographic and divorce characteristics predicted mental and physical health and whether divorce conflict added to the explanatory value of mental health after controlling for sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics. The first step of the analyses included the sociodemographic variables of age, number of children, income, and education, and the second step included the divorce-related variables of marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, and new partner status, while the third and final step included divorce conflict. The variables (Step 3) explained 14.6% of the variance of the physical health summary scores for men [ F (12,875) = 12.33, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.146] and 8.8% for women [ F (12,878) = 6.96, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.088]. Among men, lower age and higher income significantly added to the prediction of better physical health ( p < 0.05). Among women, higher income, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, and lower divorce conflict added to the prediction of better physical health ( p < 0.05) (see also Table 3 ).

Multiple regression analyses predicting SF-36 physical health summary t -scores.

For mental health, sociodemographic and divorce-related variables, as well as divorce conflict (Step 3) accounted for 19.3% of the explained variance among men [ F (12,875) = 17.15, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.193] and 9.9% among women [ F (12,878) = 7.89, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.099]. Factors that significantly added to the prediction of better mental health for men were more children, more previous divorces, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower divorce conflict, while for women, higher income, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower divorce conflict significantly added to the prediction of better mental health.

Regarding the study hypothesis, among both men and women, divorce conflict was found to significantly add to the explanation of mental health after controlling for basic sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics (see also Table 4 ).

Multiple regression analyses predicting SF-36 mental health summary t -scores.

Pertaining to research question one, across gender, the study found that the mental health of Danish divorcees was significantly different from and worse than the Danish background population immediately following divorce. Further, across all mental health indicators, the magnitudes of these differences were large [i.e., Cohen’s ( d ) = 0.78–1.38]. The results for physical health were more equivocal. While both male and female divorcees reported better physical functioning in everyday life than the Danish background population, both genders also reported worse general health than the background population immediately following divorce.

The results for mental health corroborate existing research in the field and, notably, the effect sizes here were large, which may mainly reflect the timing of the collection of baseline data. With the unique opportunity to collect data very close to the juridical divorce (on average less than five days from juridical divorce) and the fact that the majority of the sample divorced without any prior separation period, data may have been less subject to a “time heals effect” ( Hald et al., 2020a ). Following Amato (2000) DSR, this means that time has not yet had a chance to mitigate the adverse effects of the divorce. Further, although caution needs to be taken regarding the generalizability of the sample, due to the non-probability sampling process, the results offer some of the first insights into how adverse the impacts of divorce on mental health may be immediately following divorce, using a range of common mental health indicators ( Sander et al., 2020 ).

The equivocal findings concerning physical health among divorcees immediately following divorce, we speculate, mainly have to do with (a) the study sample, (b) the content of questions of the outcome measure, and (c) the timing of measurements. Accordingly, the study sample comprised relatively younger individuals as compared to the background population sample used for comparisons. The majority of the items from the physical health scale include responses to tasks most non-elderly individuals would easily be able to accomplish, but which may prove increasingly difficult with age (e.g., walking one block, dressing and bathing, or lifting or carrying groceries), and this may account for the better physical health among our study sample as compared to the background population. Further, as first suggested by Sander et al. (2020) , when it comes to physical health, a “time hurts” effect may also be at play, whereby physical health is more adversely affected over the course of time following divorce than immediately after the divorce. A causal mechanism may be that reduced mental health increasingly adversely affects physical health over time ( Sander et al., 2020 ). We encourage future studies to further investigate this.

From an applied point of view, across diverse samples and patient groups, better health-related quality of life as measured by the SF-36 has been found to be associated with lower risk of morbidity, mortality, cancer as well as the recurrence of cancer, anxiety, and depressive symptoms (e.g., Lacson et al., 2010 ; Saquib et al., 2011 ; Folker et al., 2019 ). Further, multiple studies have found that worse health-related quality of life as measured by the SF-36 instrument is predictive of higher occurrence of work absence due to sickness, hospitalizations, and higher health care costs among both general populations and across multiple subpopulations (e.g., Lacson et al., 2010 ; Laaksonen et al., 2011 ; Pymont and Butterworth, 2015 ). In conjunction with the study results, especially for mental health, this means that there is sound human and financial reasoning in developing interventions that may help divorcees cope with adverse (mental) health effects of their divorce and, that among many divorcees, the need for help may be especially pronounced immediate following their divorce.

Pertaining to research question 2 and the study hypothesis, it was found that for men, lower age and higher income added to the prediction of better physical health. Among women, higher income, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict added to the prediction of better physical health. For mental health, among men, it was found that more children, more previous divorces, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict added to the prediction of better mental health, while for women, higher income, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict were found to add to better mental health. Moreover, our study hypothesis that divorce conflict would add to the overall prediction of mental health, even when other sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics were controlled for, was supported. Of note, lower divorce conflict also predicted better physical health for women.

The current study indicates that, already at the time of or close to juridical divorce, higher degrees of divorce conflict are associated with worse mental health, even after accounting for other sociodemographic variables and divorce-related factors. This may not be surprising, given that higher degrees of divorce conflict are likely to negatively interfere with or complicate important decisions and life choices around the time of juridical divorce, like division of property, co-parenting, and child custody. This study finding accentuates the need to focus on divorce conflict levels already at divorce onset ( Hald et al., 2020d ).

Amato’s DSR theory stipulates that the adverse effects of divorce depend on the interplay between risk and protective factors ( Amato, 2010 ). These factors include many of those found in this study to significantly predict both mental and physical health, including income (DSR = economic security, standards of living), new partner status (DSR = having a new partner), and levels of divorce conflict (DSR = conflict with the former partner). Accordingly, the results of this study may be seen as support for Amato’s DSR theory, in that DSR theory views divorce “not as a discrete event, but as a process that unfolds over months and even years” ( Amato, 2010 , p. 10). Moreover, it follows that mental and physical health may already be adversely affected prior to the juridical divorce as a consequence of a prolonged stressful and/or unsatisfactory relationship ( Hald et al., 2020c ). Therefore, the measurements of mental and physical health employed in this study, done immediately after juridical divorce with little or no prior separation period, may “capture” the mental and physical health consequences of this “…process that unfolds over months and even years” ( Amato, 2010 , p. 10).

Notably, even in an egalitarian society such as the Danish one, with a large public sector, a well-developed welfare system, and fewer differences between rich and poor as compared to most other Western countries, higher income still significantly predicted mental well-being among women and physical well-being among both men and women. In accordance with DSR theory, this suggests that income may be a key protective factor against negative divorce-related health impacts ( Leopold, 2018 ), even in highly egalitarian societies. Even more so, income may be more important than level of education, a variable previously found to be related to post-divorce psychological and physical health outcomes ( Cohen and Finzi-Dottan, 2012 ; Perrig-Chiello et al., 2015 ), but which was not found to significantly predict mental or physical well-being in this study.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to include a large sample of very recently divorced individuals, employ standardized and validated mental and physical health measures consisting of multiple health-related indicators with available background population data for direct comparisons, and a multitude of sociodemographical and divorce-related variables previously shown to be associated with health-related outcomes. However, when evaluating the results, the following study limitations should be taken into consideration. The study used a non-probability sample of divorcees and employed self-report measures, which may limit the generalizability of findings. Specifically, the study sample may have consisted of individuals with more conflicts and more mental and physical problems than those who did not participate in the study, as these individuals may have believed that the intervention platform would be particularly helpful to them. Conversely, it may also be that people with more conflicts and more mental and physical problems may have decided not to participate because it may have felt threatening to their sense of self ( Howell and Shepperd, 2012 ; DiBello et al., 2015 ), and thus, are underrepresented in the current study. Additionally, we were unable to determine if both partners in a prior marriage participated in the study, which may affect the assumption of independence of data in the analyses. Further, due to the cross-sectional nature of our data, the results preclude causal inferences. Lastly, while the Danish context is interesting for several reasons, including the minimal societal stigma surrounding divorce and the presence of greater gender and income equality, there is also great acceptance of non-marital cohabitation, such that many couples choose to not get legally married. As the study targeted formerly legally married individuals, individuals who cohabitate were not recruited, and thus, it is unclear whether the study results may generalize to this group of individuals. However, we expect that the relationship dissolution process is similar for married and cohabitating individuals, to the extent that there can be children involved and shared assets (e.g., house). Therefore, we do not have reason to expect that non-married individuals differ from married individuals; however, future research should seek to examine this point.

In conclusion, the study found that the health-related quality of life of Danish divorcees immediately following divorce was significantly different from and worse than the comparative Danish background population. Further, higher levels of divorce conflict predicted worse mental health even after controlling for other sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics often targeted in research on the interplay between divorce and health. The findings underscore the relevance of providing divorce interventions for divorcees as early as possible following their divorce to improve health-related quality of life.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency and the Regional Scientific Ethical Committee of Copenhagen, Denmark. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

This original research report is part of the doctoral thesis for SS. SS and GH were responsible for the design of the intervention and the study protocol and also responsible for the manuscript writing. JS was responsible for data analysis. CØ and AC were responsible for feedback and editing. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

For due diligence, we would like to declare that the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where the authors work, owns the digital intervention platform “Cooperation after Divorce (CAD)” while two of the co-authors (GH and SS) hold the commercial license and intellectual property rights to the platform through the Company “CAD” (Samarbejde Efter Skilsmisse ApS). The reviewer LL declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with the author to the handling editor at the time of the review.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Egmont Foundation for support with the development of the digital platform “Cooperation After Divorce,” the Danish State Administration for help during the data collection process, and the Carlsberg Foundation for their funding of the research project “When Marriage Fails.”

Funding. This work was financially supported by “The Carlsberg Foundation Distinguished Associate Professor Fellowship” (the last author) under Grant No. CF16-0094.

• Amato P. R. (2000). The consequences of divorce for adults and children. J. Marriage Family 62 1269–1287. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.01269.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Amato P. R. (2010). Research on divorce: continuing trends and new developments. J. Marriage Family 72 650–666. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00723.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett A. E. (2000). Marital trajectories and mental health. J. Health Soc. Behav. 41 451–464. 10.2307/2676297 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bennett D. A. (2001). How can i deal with missing data in my study? Aus. N. Z. J. Public Health 25 464–469. 10.1111/j.1467-842X.2001.tb00294.x [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bjorner J. B., Thunedborg K., Kristensen T. S., Modvig J., Bech P. (1998). The danish SF-36 health survey. J. Clin. Epidemiol. 51 991–999. 10.1016/S0895-4356(98)00091-92 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Blekesaune M. (2008). Partnership transitions and mental distress: investigating temporal order. J. Marriage Family 70 879–890. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00533.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bracke P. F., Colman E., Symoens S. A. A., Van Praag L. (2010). Divorce, divorce rates, and professional care seeking for mental health problems in europe: a cross-sectional population-based study. BMC Public Health 10 : 224 . 10.1186/1471-2458-10-224 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bulloch A. G. M., Williams J. V. A., Lavorato D. H., Patten S. B. (2017). The depression and marital status relationship is modified by both age and gender. J. Affect. Disord. 223 65–68. 10.1016/j.jad.2017.06.007 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cipric A., Strizzi J. M., Øverup C. S., Lange T., Štulhofer A., Sander S., et al. (2020). Cooperation after divorce: an RCT study of the effects of a digital intervention platform on self-perceived stress. Psychosoc. Intervent. 29 113–123. 10.5093/pi2020a7 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cohen O., Finzi-Dottan R. (2012). Reasons for divorce and mental health following the breakup. J. Divorce Remarriage 53 581–601. 10.1080/10502556.2012.719413 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Colman El, Symoens S., Bracke P. (2012). Professional health care use and subjective unmet need for social or emotional problems: a cross-sectional survey of the married and divorced population of flanders. BMC Health Serv. Res. 12 : 420 . 10.1186/1472-6963-12-420 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• DiBello A. M., Neighbors C., Ammar J. (2015). Self-Affirmation theory and cigarette smoking warning images. Add. Behav. 41 87–96. 10.1016/j.addbeh.2014.09.026 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dong Y., Peng C.-Y. J. (2013). Principled missing data methods for researchers. SpringerPlus 2 : 222 . 10.1186/2193-1801-2-222 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• European Institute for Gender Equality (2018). Gender Equality Index. Vilnius: European Institute for Gender Equality. [ Google Scholar ]
• Folker A. P., Hegelund E. R., Mortensen E. L., Wimmelmann C. L., Flensborg-Madsen T. (2019). The association between life satisfaction, vitality, self-rated health, and risk of cancer. Q. Life Res. 28 947–954. 10.1007/s11136-018-2083-2081 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gray J. D., Silver R. C. (1990). Opposite sides of the same coin: former spouses’ divergent perspectives in coping with their divorce. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 59 1180–1191. 10.1037/0022-3514.59.6.1180 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hald G. M., Ciprić A., Øverup C. S., Štulhofer A., Lange T., Sander S., et al. (2020a). Randomized controlled trial study of the effects of an online divorce platform on anxiety, depression, and somatization. J. Family Psychol. 34 740–751. 10.1037/fam0000635 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hald G. M., Ciprić A., Sander S., Strizzi J. M. (2020b). Anxiety, depression and associated factors among recently divorced individuals. J. Mental Health 10.1080/09638237.2020.1755022 [Epub ahead of print]. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hald G. M., Ciprić A., Strizzi J. M., Sander S. (2020c). “Divorce Burnout” among recently divorced individuals. Stress Health 36 457–468. 10.1002/smi.2940 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hald G. M., Strizzi J. M., Ciprić A., Sander S. (2020d). The divorce conflict scale. J. Divorce Remarriage 61 83–104. 10.1080/10502556.2019.1627150 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hewitt B., Turrell G. (2011). Short-term functional health and well-being after marital separation: does initiator status make a difference? Am. J. Epidemiol. 173 1308–1318. 10.1093/aje/kwr007 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hewitt B., Turrell G., Giskes K. (2012). Marital loss, mental health and the role of perceived social support: findings from six waves of an australian population based panel study. J. Epidemiol. Comm. Health 66 308–314. 10.1136/jech.2009.104893 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Howell J. L., Shepperd J. A. (2012). Reducing information avoidance through affirmation. Psychol. Sci. 23 141–145. 10.1177/0956797611424164 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kessing L. V., Agerbo E., Mortensen P. B. (2003). Does the impact of major stressful life events on the risk of developing depression change throughout life? Psychol. Med. 33 1177–1184. 10.1017/S0033291703007852 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Knöpfli B., Cullati S., Courvoisier D. S., Burton-Jeangros C., Perrig-Chiello P. (2016). Marital breakup in later adulthood and self-rated health: a cross-sectional survey in switzerland. Int. J. Public Health 61 357–366. 10.1007/s00038-015-0776-776 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kposowa A. J. (2000). Marital status and suicide in the national longitudinal mortality study. J. Epidemiol. Comm. Health 54 254–261. 10.1136/jech.54.4.254 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kulik L., Heine-Cohen E. (2011). Coping resources, perceived stress and adjustment to divorce among israeli women: assessing effects. J. Soc. Psychol. 151 5–30. 10.1080/00224540903366453 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Laaksonen M., Kääriä S.-A., Leino-Arjas P., Lahelma E. (2011). Different domains of health functioning as predictors of sickness absence – a prospective cohort study. Scand. J. Work Environ. Health 37 213–218. 10.5271/sjweh.3131 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lacson E., Xu J., Lin S.-F., Dean S. G., Lazarus J. M., Hakim R. M. (2010). A comparison of SF-36 and SF-12 composite scores and subsequent hospitalization and mortality risks in long-term dialysis patients. Clin. J. Am. Soc. Nephrol. 5 252–260. 10.2215/CJN.07231009 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Leopold T. (2018). Gender differences in the consequences of divorce: a study of multiple outcomes. Demography 55 769–797. 10.1007/s13524-018-0667-6 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Leys C., Ley C., Klein O., Bernard P., Licata L. (2013). Detecting outliers: do not use standard deviation around the mean, use absolute deviation around the median. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 49 764–766. 10.1016/j.jesp.2013.03.013 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lindström M. (2009). Marital status, social capital, material conditions and self-rated health: a population-based study. Health Policy 93 172–179. 10.1016/j.healthpol.2009.05.010 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Maruish M. E. (2011). User’s Manual for the SF-36v2 Health Survey , 3rd Edn Lincoln: QualityMetric Incorporated. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mastekaasa A. (1994). Psychological well-being and marital dissolution: selection effects? J. Family Issues 15 208–228. 10.1177/0192513X94015002004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nielsen N. M., Davidsen R. B., Hviid A., Wohlfahrt J. (2014). Divorce and risk of hospital-diagnosed infectious diseases. Scand. J. Public Health 42 705–711. 10.1177/1403494814544398 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• OECD (2018). Income Inequality (indicator). Paris: OECD. [ Google Scholar ]
• Øygard L. (2004). Divorce support groups: what factors are of importance regarding friendship development in the groups? Soc. Work Groups 26 59–77. 10.1300/J009v26n04_05 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Perrig-Chiello P., Hutchison S., Morselli D. (2015). Patterns of psychological adaptation to divorce after a long-term marriage. J. Soc. Personal Relationships 32 386–405. 10.1177/0265407514533769 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Petren R. E., Ferraro A. J., Davis T. R., Pasley K. (2017). Factors linked with coparenting support and conflict after divorce. J. Divorce Remarriage 58 145–160. 10.1080/10502556.2017.1300013 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pymont C., Butterworth P. (2015). Longitudinal cohort study describing persistent frequent attenders in australian primary healthcare. BMJ Open 5 : e008975 . 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008975 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sakraida T. J. (2008). Stress and coping of midlife women in divorce transition. Western J. Nurs. Res. 30 869–887. 10.1177/0193945907311324 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sander S., Hald G. M., Cipric A., Øverup C. S., Strizzi J. M., Gad Kjeld S., et al. (2020). A randomised controlled trial study of the effects of a digital divorce platform on mental and physical health. Appl. Psychol. Health Well-Being 12 863–886. 10.1111/aphw.12213 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Saquib N., Pierce J. P., Saquib J., Flatt S. W., Natarajan L., Bardwell W. A., et al. (2011). Poor physical health predicts time to additional breast cancer events and mortality in breast cancer survivors. Psycho-Oncology 20 252–259. 10.1002/pon.1742 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sbarra D. A., Nietert P. J. (2009). Divorce and death: forty years of the charleston heart study. Psychol. Sci. 20 107–113. 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02252.x [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schafer J. L. (1999). Multiple imputation: a primer. Stat. Methods Med. Res. 8 3–15. 10.1177/096228029900800102 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simon R. W. (2002). Revisiting the relationships among gender, marital status, and mental health. Am. J. Soc. 107 1065–1096. 10.1086/339225 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sweeney M. M., Horwitz A. V. (2001). Infidelity, initiation, and the emotional climate of divorce: are there implications for mental health? J. Health Soc. Behav. 42 295–309. 10.2307/3090216 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Symoens S., Bastaits K., Mortelmans D., Bracke P. (2013a). Breaking up, breaking hearts? characteristics of the divorce process and well-being after divorce. J. Divorce Remarriage 54 177–196. 10.1080/10502556.2013.773792 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Symoens S., Van de Velde S., Colman E., Bracke P. (2013b). Divorce and the multidimensionality of men and women’s mental health: the role of social-relational and socio-economic conditions. Appl. Res. Q. Life 9 197–214. 10.1007/s11482-013-9239-9235 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Symoens S., Colman E., Bracke P. (2014). Divorce, conflict, and mental health: how the quality of intimate relationships is linked to post-divorce well-being. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 44 220–233. 10.1111/jasp.12215 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thuen F. (2001). Psychiatric symptoms and perceived need for psychiatric care after divorce. J. Divorce Remarriage 34 61–76. 10.1300/J087v34n01_04 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Uggla C., Andersson G. (2018). Higher divorce risk when mates are plentiful? evidence from Denmark. Biol. Lett. 14 : 20180475 . 10.1098/rsbl.2018.0475 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Waite L. J., Luo Y., Lewin A. C. (2009). Marital happiness and marital stability: consequences for psychological well-being. Soc. Sci. Res. 38 201–212. 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2008.07.001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wang H., Amato P. R. (2000). Predictors of divorce adjustment: stressors, resources, and definitions. J. Marriage Family 62 655–668. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00655.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weiss R. S. (1976). The emotional impact of marital separation. J. Soc. Issues 32 135–145. 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1976.tb02484.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Advertisement

J.D. Vance on the Issues, From Abortion to the Middle East

Like Donald J. Trump, the Ohio senator has been skeptical of American intervention overseas and argues that raising tariffs will create new jobs.

• Share full article

By Adam Nagourney

• Published July 15, 2024 Updated July 17, 2024

Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Donald J. Trump’s newly chosen running mate, has made a shift from the Trump critic he was when he first entered politics to the loyalist he is today. It was a shift both in style and substance: Now, on topics as disparate as trade and Ukraine, Mr. Vance is closely aligned with Mr. Trump.

Here’s a look at where the senator stands on the issues that will most likely dominate the campaign ahead and, should Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance win in November, their years in the White House.

Mr. Vance opposes abortion rights, even in the case of incest or rape, but says there should be exceptions for cases when the mother’s life is in danger. He praised the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. As he ran for Senate in 2022, a headline on the issues section of his campaign website read simply: “Ban Abortion.”

Mr. Vance has said that he would support a 15-week national ban proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He has also said the matter is “primarily a state issue,” suggesting states should be free to make more restrictive laws. “Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable, he said in an interview with USA Today Network in October 2022.

Mr. Vance has been one of the leading opponents of U.S. support for Ukraine in the war with Russia. “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine,” he said in a podcast interview with Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser and longtime ally. “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

He led the battle in the Senate, unsuccessfully, to block a $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine. “I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war,” he wrote in an opinion essay for The New York Times early this year challenging President Biden’s stance on the war. “Mr. Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground.”

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Why did JD Vance change his name?

Jd vance's name changes tie back to his maternal grandparents, and the ohio background that spawned hillbilly elegy and an eventual vp nomination.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has gone through numerous changes − from comparing former Donald Trump to Hitler to accepting a place on Trump's ticket, from bestselling author to Silicon Valley to the stage of the Republican National Convention.

It's not just Vance's beliefs or career trajectory that has changed, but his name as well.

Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, a town halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati. Following his parents' divorce, Bowman's middle name was changed David.

James adopted his stepfather's last name for some of his teenage years, with his 2003 senior yearbook identifying him as James Hamel. This was also the name used during James' military service from 2003 to 2007, where he served as a Corporal in the Marines.

Marriage to JD Vance's wife Usha

In 2014, Vance married his wife, Usha , and decided to take on his maternal grandparents' surname. In his bestselling novel Hillbilly Elegy , and in his congressional bio , Vance has repeatedly emphasized their importance in his upbringing, and thanked his grandmother in his Senate victory speech, and in his vice presidential acceptance speech , causing the RNC audience to chant "Mamaw! Mamaw!"

Vance's family history is central to his name change, and equally critical to his selection as vice president.

Vance's association with blue-collar, rust-belt America, a place he characterizes as "cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling class in Washington," could prove pivotal in helping Trump flip back crucial states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Cy Neff reports on Wyoming politics for USA TODAY. You can reach him at [email protected] or on X, formerly known as Twitter,  @CyNeffNews