Kids of Divorced Parents

Some social scientists call our generation the "Divorce Echo." As Americans, not one of us can say that we don't know anyone who has ever been divorced, or whose parent's were divorced. Because of the boom of divorces in the 80's, we've grown up seeing it all around us. And the chances that you, the reader of this article's parents have been divorced, are pretty high. But what does that say for your future? For your marriage potential? Or your relationship success? You've probably heard that children of divorced parents are fighting and uphill battle when it comes to marriage, they're twice as likely to divorce as people with intact families. 

What these rumors boil down to are bad statistics. Originally when all of this data was published, we did see that, on average, these kids were having less success in marriages. However, when we had a second to think about it we thought "That's not right." Sure enough, when we went back to look at it, we had what was called a bimodal distribution. Let me show you.

So what we have here is a two humped camel. I should note that this is not the data regarding marital success of children of divorced parents. I stole this from Google Images and therefore have no idea what data set this represents. However, it is a great representation for proving my point. If you look in the middle there you'll see two words "median" and "mean." Think back to 7th grade math and somewhere in the recesses of your mind you may remember than median simply means "middle" and mean is another word of "average." So! With a bimodal distribution you actually have two averages, but since collected data doesn't actually look like that there graph and actually looks more like this 

It's hard to tell what's going on sometimes. Anyway, back to the point. Since we have two averages, it means we have two major groups: one with really low risk of divorce, and one with really high risk of divorce. But when we average them, we get this really low number like the mean in our bimodal distribution above, which causes some problems. 

So what this means for children with divorced parent is that they have a choice. The high risk group are individuals who have decided that there is no other option. They have chosen to become a statistic. The low risk group on the other hand, saw their parents' marriage and decided that they wanted better, and their marriages have either been comparable in quality to those who came from intact families, or in a lot of cases, even exceeded them. 

I love this study because it shows us that we can choose our destiny. Statistics give us a great understanding of behaviors that increase or decrease our chances of an outcome and then have the opportunity to use the gift of choice to determine our own fate. 

Marriage = Game Over

We've talked about the changes in marriage trends as people are getting married less often, and later on in life. In the research that's been done many individuals source reasons such as fear of divorce, desire to be financially stable, and fear of losing "freedom."

Freedom can be defined by anything from boys/girls weekends, to having awesome sex, to sadness and despair in its wake. People are legitimately believing this - you may be believing this. But I ask you then - if it's terrible, why are people still getting married? Better yet, why are they staying married?

The benefits of marriage are a widely popular study in the field of family sciences, and that's because as the culture, definitions and parameters surrounding marriage change, it's important that we reevaluate to make sure they're still the same, and so far so good. Now, before jumping in to the benefits, let's talk about means and norms. These things are going to be true for most couples, there are some who these don't hold true for, for a multitude of reasons. There always exceptions to rules.

Linda J. Waite from the University of Chicago is a sociologist who studies families. Her emphasis is strongly in the field of couples and marriage and she's pretty well known in the field for her extensive work. In several studies she has found that married people are not only happier, on average, than single, divorced, or widowed individuals, but healthier.

In the case of men the level of risk-taking behaviors (drug use, binge drinking, etc.) drops dramatically. Because individuals have someone to support them in healthy living, the health benefits increase significantly. Married individuals also have twice the sex of single people, and statistically similar amounts to cohabiting individuals. And most importantly, while men and women both experience up-swings in happiness once they're married, the difference for men is much greater - than even those who are living with their partner.

Both genders experience these benefits, but by and large men experience a much greater jump in all categories than women. There's much speculation about why this could be, but it's just that - speculation. So does marriage equal game over? To me, it looks like it's game on.

Practice Makes Perfect

Back in the 80's when the U.S. legalized No Fault divorce we saw a huge jump in divorce rates - up to 50%. During that time we also saw a large up-tick in cohabitation rates. Most researchers looked at this and hypothesized that these couples would actually fare better than couples who just jumped straight into marriage - after all, practice makes perfect, right?

Turns out this isn't actually the case. As the years passed by, the same researchers started to look at the data and they started to see that couples that were living together before they were married were actually ending more frequently. Thirty years down the road we're now seeing the results in pre-marital child-births, continual divorce rates, and late age of marriage. Now some people have looked at this and assumed cohabitation to be the kiss of death for relationships. On the other hand, if we look at the data, what we find is that most of these studies are actually lumping all cohabiting couples together into one big group of data. But when we step back and look at it, it's pretty easy to see that couples that are living together don't all have the same goals.

A 2011 study published by Brian Willoughby divided cohabiting couples into several different categories based on each partner's trajectory toward marriage (within a year, or longer), whether they agreed on marital trajectory, and their relationship status (dating or engaged). What he found was that the factor that made cohabiting couples the most unhappy was their agreement on marriage trajectory.

For instance, let's say Bob and Sally have been living together for a year, they're engaged, and they have a date set for the following year. Jimmy and Julie live upstairs from Bob and Sally. They've been living together for 2 years and Julie wants to get married, preferably within the next year, while Jimmy still isn't sure about the whole marriage thing. What Jimmy and Julie have is an incongruence of marital trajectories. According the Willoughby's research, Bob and Sally are going to have an overall greater relationship satisfaction, with better perception of communication and less likely to feel like their relationship is "on the rocks" - regardless of the fact that they've been together longer.

Willoughby reports that "being in either an incongruent engaged or incongruent non-engaged cohabiting relationship was associated with generally negative outcomes compared to other types of couples." And as you read through his entire article, what the statistics start to unravel is this idea of both people being on the same timeline. While the happiest and most stable of all of the couples were those who are living together and plan to marry within the next year, it's almost no contest that the unhappiest and most unstable of all of the couples are those who - whether living together or not and engaged or not - disagree on where their relationship is going.

Men and Women - Different Planets?

Pop Quiz: What's the best-selling self-help book of all time?

How to Win Friends and Influence People?
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People?

Nope, Covey and Carnegie couldn't even compete when it came to John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. According to CNN it's sold over 50 million copies world wide (pretty rare for a self-help book) and is considered the #1 best-selling piece of non-fiction from the 1990's. Kind of impressive. 

It would be more impressive if his claims had legitimate social science backing, but that's fine. However you get your cash money right? 

If you've never heard of it before this moment then that means you're super young, but even then you can pretty much guess the premise. You've probably even had experiences that point to the validity of his claims. We've all been to that point in a relationship when we wonder if we're dating someone who even speaks the same language as us, and we blame it on the 'ol gender differences. 

However, when we actually look at the differences between men and women, we find that the only behavioral difference that actually exists (statistically speaking) is women's exceptional ability to have and display empathy for others. In every other category - including aggression, self-disclosure, desire for emotional support, and assertiveness - the differences are minute.

As far as Gray's claim that men and women need different things from relationships, a 2006 article published by Dr. Jason Carroll outlined a relationship quality prediction model, which had a 65% prediction rate for women, and 67% for men. Statistically, that's gold. What he found was that the combination of 3 factors contributed to happy relationships for both men and women. What are they? Effective negotiation (i.e. problem solving, conflict resolution, listening), Other-centeredness (i.e. forgiveness, kindness, sacrifice) and personal security (i.e. self-worth, personality characteristics).

When these categories are broken down into their individual couple processes (forgiveness, problem solving, etc.) we find two major differences between men and women - women are more likely to claim "relationship satisfaction" in the presence of positive elements such as partner's displays of kindness and sacrifice, and men are more likely to feel satisfied in their relationship in the absence of negative. These are important differences to understand in a relationship, but Gray's claims don't even come close to expressing this notion in his book.

Finally, in an article published by Reis and Carothers in 2012 assessed gender differences in both behavioral and psychological categories through 24 different variables including personality traits, sexual attitudes and behaviors, and measures of intimacy. They found not only found that men and women really aren't that different, but also that many of the complaints that happen between heterosexual couples are also found in gay and lesbian relationships.

So do men and women really have completely different emotional make-ups? According to repeat findings in the research, the answer is, "no." And I feel like Reis nailed it when he said, "Clearly, it's not so much sex, but human character that causes difficulties."