Thoughts on 53% Divorce Rate?

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None at all, I have thick skin, takes quite a bit to get to me šŸ˜ƒ

I wish you the best with your kids and all.
 
Wow! Thatā€™s Not what Iā€™ve heard at all.

What Iā€™ve heard in the Marriage Bible Study Class weā€™ve been attending is that Marriage Rates are up and Divorce Rates having been steadily dropping since the peak in 1980.

This link to a Time article confirms that Divorce Rates are definitely Down. In 2015, only 16.9 marriages out of 1,000 ended in Divorce for women 15 and older!


And the National Catholic Register in 2013 also reports less than 50% Divorce Ratesā€¦ specifically 40% among all non-religious couples, 39% Protestant, 35% other Faith and that Catholic Couples are statistically the Least likely to Divorce with just a 28%.
http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/catholics-continue-to-have-lowest-divorce-rates#.Wr0L6dBlDqA

Divorce is Down & Marriage is Up, Statically speaking.
 
Vonsalza said:
Pride and selfishness are much, much more common reasons for divorce in western culture.
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But it only takes one personā€™s pride and selfishness to generate a divorce. Just because a person files doesnā€™t mean he or she is the selfish one, although it doesnā€™t preclude it, eitherā€¦
 
TEdwards said:
Whether or not itā€™s fair, annulments are seen as ā€œCatholic divorcesā€ by a significant majority of Catholics. It is, after all, not just an end of a Catholic marriage, it is the fiction of saying the marriage didnā€™t existā€¦ a fiction granted by a group of men who recently were scandalized for decades of sex abuse, cover ups and the institutionalization of pedophile predation. Gotta give em credit for being great at fictionalization (is that a word?).
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Reported.

(More characters.)
 
TEdwards said:
Whether or not itā€™s fair, annulments are seen as ā€œCatholic divorcesā€ by a significant majority of Catholics.
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It is not only unfair, it is a fiction, the very thing that you accuse others of.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Because if youā€™re a single mother the state picks up a lot of the tab. You get housing assistance, SNAP, medical, pretty much free student loans etc.

Plus half the marital assets and child support, and go shack up with a new guy who can provide some financial support
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Again, if thatā€™s so, why are single mothers poor? Why arenā€™t all the swanky suburban neighborhoods occupied by single mothers?

I think what youā€™re missing is that there are two tracks in the contemporary US, and that well-off families are quite different than poorer families in terms of incentives and lifestyle. There often isnā€™t an economic incentive for poor mothers to marry to begin with or stay married, while the financial incentives are very strong for middle class and educated women to marry before becoming mothers and to stay married. Also, todayā€™s middle class is very kid welfare-minded, so itā€™s regarded as shocking to not do the best thing for oneā€™s children.

It is very, very difficult/impossible for a single mother to provide a middle class upbringing to 2+ children.
 
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JanSobieskiIII said:
Iā€™m speaking specifically of dead beats like a cousin of mine who married a guy, left him 6 months later and then immediately shacked up with her new boyfriend.

Of course, she also spent that guy into oblivion and then bailed on him and left him holding the bag on her bills too.
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Whatā€™s your cousinā€™s net worth?

Negative, right?
 
Non existent, but she still manages to live the life she wants. Constantly going on trips and dumped her kids off on her sister while still collecting child support and spending it on her herself.

People at the bottom like that donā€™t put any emphasis on net worth. As long as they can get their next pack of cigs, bag of weed, or a new tattoo a few times a year theyā€™re pretty content.

There are of course exceptions who work hard and change their station.
 
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JanSobieskiIII said:
Non existent, but she still manages to live the life she wants. Constantly going on trips and dumped her kids off on her sister while still collecting child support and spending it on her herself.

People at the bottom like that donā€™t put any emphasis on net worth. As long as they can get their next pack of cigs, bag of weed, or a new tattoo a few times a year theyā€™re pretty content.

There are of course exceptions who work hard and change their station.
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She wonā€™t be living ā€œthe life she wantsā€ in old age.

Anyone who gets married with the idea that she can get alimony has a screw loose. Itā€™s sociopathic, actually. I donā€™t know how anyone with a tinge of a conscience could do it. Not that no one does, but that does not remotely explain the divorce rate. As for public support, you donā€™t have to go through a marriage to get that.

What I see in the divorces I know of is in three categories:
a. people who finally decide theyā€™re not going to spend their whole life with a toxic housemate who verbally abuses them and is not interested in either emotional or sexual intimacy. That kind might have stayed married in the old days, but everyone would feel sorry for them. Canon law does allow separation with the bond remaining if one spouse wonā€™t let the other one live in peace, and I think people have come to realize how damaging words are.
b. people whose spouse cheats or who imagine they have ā€œfound their soulmateā€ and leave. There are so many couples who are divorced and sharing custody that there arenā€™t so many who stay together so the children can grow up with both parents in the house. There were a lot of spouses who stuck in there with an unfaithful spouse in the old days. Now the unfaithful spouse can just leave and take half of everything with them. That came about because of no-fault divorce, IMHO. Look back in the history of Hollywood, and there are quite a few stars who were notoriously living with someone else but whose spouse would not allow a divorce.
c. people (mostly women) who in the old days would have had no means of support if they left, so they stick it out in an abusive situation. It does not help children to be raised in a house with an addict who physically and emotionally abuses them or their other parent. It is child abuse to force them to do it. That perception has changed, too. It used to be that people thought that living with your abusive alcoholic mom or dad was better than not having two parents. According to the children I know who got out of a house like that: not true.

The truth is that the old divorce rate was probably too low for justice and the welfare of children. Now it is way too high, but partly because honestly I think a lot more people are emotionally messed up and lack perseverance for anything. (The Pope has complained about how even prospective seminarians donā€™t want to sign on for a lifetime with the priesthoodā€¦people donā€™t want to commit, even though the Gospel obviously calls for jumping in with both feet to your call and not looking back.)
 
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PetraG said:
Anyone who gets married with the idea that she can get alimony has a screw loose. Itā€™s sociopathic, actually. I donā€™t know how anyone with a tinge of a conscience could do it. Not that no one does, but that does not remotely explain the divorce rate.
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Plus, thatā€™s not even how things work.

One of my aunties was married for two decades to an airline pilot, who by the time he left for greener pastures, was making $200k a year. When he finally got around to filing for divorce (as she wasnā€™t going to do it), she got $2k a month for three years and then nothing. (I believe her ex-husband had timed things so that there never was any official child support.)

He also managed to run up $80k in credit card debt when they were living separately. (To be fair to him, there were five kids of his plus two new step kids of his involved at that point, and itā€™s hard to live the Biblical patriarch lifestyle with wives and concubines even on $200k a year.)
 
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A majority of Catholics do view annulment as the equivalent of a Catholic divorce. No fiction there. Standard pastoral care regimes for those impacted by anullment needs improvement. Addressing the problems with Catholic divorce has to include how Catholics understand anullment. Thereā€™s lots of room for education on the cradle-to-grave experiences with Catholic marriage including the application of anullment.
 
PetraG said:
I think a lot more people are emotionally messed up
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Absolutely. My parents divorce has made it real hard for me to date, I even let it ruin the relationship with the girl I should have married. Iā€™ve gone to quite a bit of counseling to try and get over it but that kind of stuff never really leaves you.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Absolutely. My parents divorce has made it real hard for me to date, I even let it ruin the relationship with the girl I should have married. Iā€™ve gone to quite a bit of counseling to try and get over it but that kind of stuff never really leaves you.
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Iā€™m so sorry to hear that. Youā€™re not alone. Even people from stable families look at the marriages of their friends who marry young and wind up in ugly divorces and say ā€œno, thanks.ā€

Many young people think it is impossible to have high certainty that a marriage is going to work out. They donā€™t believe they know what bodes well and what doesnā€™t. They know that whoever they marry, they are giving that person unilateral power to end it all whenever they want to, because that is how the divorce laws work now. It only takes a few months of a bad mid-life crisis or an emotional or physical affair (that is easier than ever to fall into even when you werenā€™t looking for it) and pfft thatā€™s it. It makes the optimism and resolve necessary more difficult to call forth.
 
PetraG said:
They know that whoever they marry, they are giving that person unilateral power to end it all whenever they want to, because that is how the divorce laws work now.
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ā€¦and even in the ā€œgood old days,ā€ either spouse had the unilateral power to be impossible to live with, and there was usually no exit possible.

Itā€™s always been possible to unilaterally cause misery to oneā€™s spouse.
 
I wonder if that addresses my thought, then. If marrying later is making the rates in the US decline - or if the drop is artificial because people are marrying later, and the rate hasnā€™t caught up with that.
 
All royal marriages were political back then.
The had a dispensation to marry.
From the Pope.
Then they didnā€™t have a son.
Then Henryā€™s conscience became oh-so-ticklish.

Then the ready was historyā€¦
 
Wow. This made for some reading !
Good sharing, everyone šŸ™‚

I was listening to Father Larry Richards on Monday, EWTN radioā€¦
He was speaking before an audience about marriage -
Well, was I ever surprised, when he said,
that he could pretty much tell,
how a marriage wouldnā€™t last long or work out.
And how he shrugs, because both are so determined to marry -
Itā€™s their right, he said, to marry, and he canā€™t discourage them -
But how they needed more time -
To know what they were truly getting into !
 
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