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Published: 02 August 2021

Effects of divorce and widowhood on subsequent health behaviours and outcomes in a sample of middle-aged and older Australian adults

Ding Ding 1 , 2 ,
Joanne Gale 1 , 2 ,
Adrian Bauman 1 , 2 ,
Philayrath Phongsavan 1 , 2 &
Binh Nguyen 1 , 2

Scientific Reports volume 11 , Article number: 15237 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Epidemiology
Risk factors

Marital disruption is a common life event with potential health implications. We examined the prospective association of divorce/widowhood with subsequent lifestyles, psychological, and overall health outcomes within short and longer terms using three waves of data from the 45 and Up Study in Australia (T1, 2006–09; T2, 2010; T3, 2012–16). Marital status and health-related outcomes were self-reported using validated questionnaires. Nine outcomes were examined including lifestyles (smoking, drinking, diet and physical activity), psychological outcomes (distress, anxiety and depression) and overall health/quality of life. Logistic regression was adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics and baseline health outcomes. Of the 33,184 participants who were married at T1 (mean age 59.5 ± 9.3 years), after 3.4 years, 2.9% became divorced and 2.4% widowed at T2. Recent divorce was positively associated with smoking, poor quality of life, high psychological distress, anxiety and depression at T2. Similar but weaker associations were observed for widowhood. However, these associations were much attenuated at T3 (5 years from T2). Marital disruption in midlife or at an older age can be detrimental to health, particularly psychological health in the short term. Public awareness of the health consequences of spousal loss should be raised. Resources, including professional support, should be allocated to help individuals navigate these difficult life transitions.

Moderation of marital status and living arrangements in the relationship between social participation and life satisfaction among older Indian adults

Obesity, psychological well-being related measures, and risk of seven non-communicable diseases: evidence from longitudinal studies of UK and US older adults

Psychological distress and health behaviours in people living with and beyond cancer: a cross-sectional study, introduction.

Marital status and transitions may have important implications for health. It is generally well recognised that marriage can be protective for health and reduce morbidity and mortality 1 . Possible explanations for the beneficial effects of marriage may include a sense of greater social and financial support, overall healthier behavioural patterns, and self-selection where healthier individuals tend to marry 2 . In contrast, transitions out of marriage, such as becoming divorced or widowed, are stressful life events that have been associated with poor health and survival outcomes 1 , 3 , 4 . Marital disruption is a common life event: around 42% of marriages in England and Wales 5 and about a third of marriages in Australia end in divorce 6 . Between 1990 and 2010, the divorce rate in American adults aged 50 years and above doubled, implying a rising trend of “grey divorce” 7 . Even if a marriage survives without divorce, it will inevitably end with the death of a spouse, leaving the other one in widowhood, often for years. Several meta-analyses have shown that compared to married adults, divorced and widowed adults have a higher risk of mortality from all causes 1 , 8 , 9 and specific causes including cardiovascular disease (CVD) 4 and cancer 10 .

Contrary to the consistent observations about the disadvantage in health and survival following divorce or widowhood, the mechanisms underpinning these associations are less understood 11 . Amato’s Divorce-Stress-Adjustment Perspective postulates that the process of divorce leads to stressors, which in turn, increases emotional, behavioural and health risk. The risk, which could be either short- or long-term, may differ by individual characteristics and circumstances 12 . Within this model, psychological distress is a significant intermediate outcome of marital dissolution/bereavement, which may arise from financial and emotional challenges, and can lead to adverse health outcomes 11 . Another plausible intermediate outcome includes changes in lifestyle behaviours, which may be developed as a coping mechanism to deal with psychological distress, or a response to environmental, financial and other circumstantial changes. Such psychological and behavioural outcomes could in turn affect health, quality of life and wellbeing in the immediate-to-long term and longevity in the long term. To date, there has been limited longitudinal research on how divorce/widowhood affects both psychological wellbeing 13 and lifestyle behaviours 14 , 15 , 16 . Furthermore, individuals respond and adjust to marital disruption differently 12 . Specifically men and women may have different coping strategies to psychological stressors 17 , and suffer from different consequences as a result of marital disruption 18 . For example, recent marital disruption has been associated with increased alcohol intake 19 and decreased body mass index and vegetable intake in men 14 , and higher physical activity levels and a higher risk of smoking initiation/relapse in women 15 . Individuals with better socioeconomic status 20 and social resources, such as supportive friends 21 , have also been reported to better cope with marital disruption.

With most marriages ending in divorce or widowhood, understanding the implications of marital disruption on health has important relevance to the life of many around the world. To date, most research has focused on the more “distal” outcomes, such as mortality. It is important to investigate modifiable and immediate outcomes on the pathways that lead to ill-health so that health deterioration may be prevented. It is also informative to examine whether such potential health effects persist over time. Such knowledge could improve the current understanding of the effects of major life events on health and inform interventions that aim to help individuals during marriage disruption. Moreover, previous research more commonly focused on divorce in younger populations, while the body of literature on divorce in older populations is much smaller despite the large proportion and the rising trend in “grey divorce” 7 . The objectives of this study were to examine the association of divorce and widowhood with subsequent changes in groups of selected outcomes: (1) health-related lifestyles, (2) psychological health, and (3) overall health and wellbeing, within both immediate and longer terms in middle-aged and older Australian adults.

Study population

Study participants were a subsample from the Sax Institute’s 45 and Up Study. Between February 2006 and December 2009, 267,153 adults aged 45 years and above from the state of New South Wales, Australia, submitted the baseline survey (T1, participation rate: 18%) 22 . Prospective participants were randomly sampled from the Services Australia (formerly the Australian Government Department of Human Services) Medicare enrolment database, which provides near complete coverage of the population. People aged 80 and over and residents of rural and remote areas were oversampled. In 2010, the first 100,000 respondents were invited to participate in a sub-sample follow-up study (T2): the Social, Economic, and Environmental Factor study (SEEF) (participation rate: 64.4%) 23 . Between 2012 and 2016, all living baseline participants were invited to participate in a full-sample follow-up, and 142,500 (53%) returned the survey (T3). Participants completed consent forms for all surveys. The baseline and full-sample follow-up data collection was approved by the University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee (reference: HREC 05035) and the SEEF study by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (reference: 10-2009/12187). The reporting of our analysis follows the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines (Supplementary file).

The study sample for the main analysis (Analysis 1) that focused on immediate outcomes included 33,184 men and women who reported to be in a married or cohabiting relationship at T1 and completed the marital status question at T2 (Supplementary Fig. 1 ). For those with additional follow-up data at T3, we conducted a subgroup analysis on the longer-term effects of marital disruption (Analysis 2) among those who reported to be married at T1, reported marital status at T2 and T3, and did not change marital status between T2 and T3 (Supplementary Fig. 2 ).

Sex-specific baseline and full-sample follow-up questionnaires can be found at https://www.saxinstitute.org.au/our-work/45-up-study/questionnaires/ . The SEEF questionnaire is included in Supplementary File.

Exposure variable

For the purpose of the study, both divorce/separation and widowhood were considered marital disruption 14 , 24 , but were considered as separate categories in the analysis because the two events usually happen at different stages in life within distinct circumstances and may have different implications on health 14 . For the purpose of the analysis, we combined those who were married and in a de facto relationship (living with a partner) together as “married”, because in Australia, those in a de facto relationship are considered legally similar to married couples 25 . In our sample, those in a de facto relationship are slightly younger than their legally married counterparts and account for 7% of the participants who were classified as “married” at T1. For Analysis 1, those who were married at both T1 and T2 were defined as “remained married”, those who were married at T1 but reported to be single, divorced or separated at T2 were defined as “recently divorced/seperated (‘divorced’ thereafter)” and those who were married at T1 but widowed at T2 were defined as “recently widowed”. For Analysis 2, those who reported to be in a married relationship at all three time points were defined as “continuously married”, and those who reported to be single, divorced or separated at T2 and T3 were defined as “remained divorced” and those who reported to be widowed at T2 and T3 were defined as “remained widowed”. Because the objective of Analysis 2 is to examine long-term implications of divorce and widowhood, we focused the analysis on those whose marital status remained the same between T2 and T3, and excluded those who became divorced or widowed between T2 and T3 due to the recency of events (n = 1768), those who remarried/re-partnered between T2 and T3 due to the lack of consistent exposure (n = 145), and those who changed between divorced and widowed because the events were difficult to interpret (n = 27).

Outcome measures

We examined nine self-reported outcome variables in three categories: (1) health-related lifestyles: smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity; (2) psychological outcomes: psychological distress, anxiety and depression; (3) overall health and wellbeing: self-rated health and quality of life. Responses were coded as 1 for being “at risk” and 0 for “not at risk”, as described in Table 1 .

Covariates and effect modifiers

The following variables were selected as covariates: age (continuous), sex, educational attainment (up to 10 years, high school/diploma/trade, university), residential location (major city vs regional/remote, based on the Accessibility Remoteness Index of Australia 26 ), country of birth (Australia vs overseas) and follow-up time. Specifically, we selected education, rather than income, as a socioeconomic indicator, because previous research repeatedly concluded that education generally has the strongest effects on health behaviors 27 , and it has nearly complete data in the 45 and Up Study. Therefore, it has been consistently recommended as a stable and reliable socioeconomic indicator for the current cohort 28 , 29 .

In addition, several variables were selected as potential effect modifiers based on evidence from previous studies, including: age categories, sex, educational attainment and social support 14 , 17 , 21 , 30 , 31 , 32 . Based on previous evidence suggesting that friends’, rather than family’s support buffers health deterioration following marriage disruption 21 , we used one question from the Duke Social Support Index 33 to measure social support outside of family. The question asks about the number of people outside of home within one hour of travel one can depend on or feel close to. Based on previous investigation in the SEEF study, this single question had the most consistent association with psychological distress across sex and age categories and was therefore chosen as an indicator for social support 34 . Responses were dichotomised at the median into low (0–4 people) and high (5 + people).

Statistical analysis

Baseline sociodemographic characteristics and health-related outcomes of the three marital transition groups were compared using ANOVA and χ 2 tests. For Analysis 1, those who remained married served as the reference category when comparing outcomes with those who became divorced and widowed. For Analysis 2, those who were “continuously married” between T1 and T3 served as the reference category when comparing outcomes with those who “remained divorced” or “remained widowed”. Separate binary logistic regression models were fitted for each dichotomous outcome, adjusted for all covariates and the value of each outcome at T1. Effect modification was tested by including a multiplicative interaction term in the adjusted model followed by a likelihood ratio test. Given the small amount of missing data (< 8%), we used missingness as a category for analysis. Considering that people who became divorced or widowed by T2 may be at a higher risk for death or loss to follow up by T3, posing threats to selection bias, we conducted additional analyses outlined in Supplementary file (page 5 “Methodological supplement”). All statistical analyses were conducted using SAS 9.4 and significance levels were set at p < 0.05.

Ethical approval

Approved by the University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee (reference: HREC 05035) and the SEEF study by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (reference: 10-2009/12187).

Baseline descriptive statistics

Of the 33,184 participants who were married at baseline (T1, 2006–2009), after a mean follow-up time of 3.35 (standard deviation [SD] = 0.95) years, 31,760 (95.7%) remained married at the first follow-up (T2, 2010), 616 (2.9%) became divorced and 808 (2.4%) became widowed. At T1, compared with those who remained married, those who recently divorced were younger and had slightly higher levels of education, were less likely to live in major cities and more likely to be born overseas. On the contrary, those who recently widowed were much older, predominantly females, had lower educational attainment, and were less likely to live in major cities (Table 2 ).

At T1, compared with those who remained married, those who recently divorced had around twice the prevalence of fair/poor self-rated health and quality of life, high psychological distress, anxiety, depression, and reported smoking. They also had a slightly higher prevalence of high alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, and insufficient fruit and vegetable intake. Those who were recently widowed had a higher prevalence of fair/poor self-rated health and quality of life, high psychological distress, and physical inactivity, but lower prevalence of depression, smoking, at-risk alcohol consumption, and insufficient fruit and vegetable intake.

Analysis 1: short-term health outcomes following marital disruption

After adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, health-related outcomes at T1, and follow-up time, those who recently divorced had much higher odds of fair/poor quality of life (Odds Ratio [OR] = 2.98), high psychological distress (OR = 2.78), smoking (OR = 2.40), anxiety (OR = 2.23) and depression (OR = 2.92) at T2 (Table 3 ). The associations of divorce with fair/poor self-rated health (OR = 1.22), high alcohol consumption (OR = 1.12), physical inactivity (OR = 1.04) and insufficient fruit and vegetable consumption (OR = 1.25) were non-significant. For nearly all outcomes, adjusting for covariates attenuated the associations. When comparing those who were recently widowed with those who remained married, based on adjusted analysis, recent widows had higher odds of fair/poor quality of life (OR = 1.80), high psychological distress (OR = 1.92), anxiety (OR = 1.55), depression (OR = 2.11), smoking (OR = 2.51), and insufficient fruit and vegetable consumption (OR = 1.60). Recent widows also had a marginally lower prevalence of high alcohol consumption at T2 (OR = 0.75).

Several sociodemographic characteristics seemed to have moderated the association between marital disruption and short-term health outcomes (Table 4 ). Specifically, the association between divorce and quality of life was the strongest (OR = 4.91) in the oldest group (75 + years), but the association between widowhood and quality of life was the strongest (OR = 3.35) in the youngest group (45–59 years). On the other hand, the associations of both divorce and widowhood with psychological distress were the strongest in the youngest group (OR = 2.98 and 3.53, respectively). The association between divorce and high psychological distress was stronger among those with lower education attainment (OR = 2.96, up to 10 years education; OR = 3.06, high school/diploma) but the association between widowhood and psychological distress was stronger among those with high educational attainment (OR = 4.20). The association of divorce with depression was much stronger in men (OR = 4.59) than women (OR = 1.60) but the association of widowhood was similar by sex. While there was no significant association between divorce and alcohol consumption, recent widowhood seemed to reduce the risk of high alcohol consumption among women (OR = 0.53). Finally, while there was no observed association between divorce and physical activity, widowhood was significantly associated with insufficient physical activity in those with a medium level of educational attainment only (OR = 1.46).

Analysis 2: long-term health outcomes following marital disruption

After an additional five years (mean = 4.98, SD = 0.53) of follow-up, a total of 21,605 participants reported marital status at the second follow-up (T3, 2012–2016) and did not change relationship status between T2 and T3, so that consistent relationship patterns could be determined and long-term outcomes of marital disruption that occurred between T2 and T3 could be examined. Of this subgroup of participants, 20,900 were consistently married (96.7%), 270 (1.25%) remained divorced and 435 (2.01%) remained widowed. The comparison of baseline characteristics across the three groups remained similar to that from Analysis 1 (Supplementary Table 1 ). When adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, health-related outcomes at T1, and follow-up time, those who remained divorced still had higher odds for most adverse health outcomes compared with those who were consistently married (Table 5 ), but the associations were much weaker compared with those observed in Analysis 1, and only reached statistical significance for insufficient fruit and vegetable consumption (OR = 1.55). Compared with those who were consistently married, those who remained widowed did not have consistently higher odds for adverse health outcomes and none of the associations was statistically significant. We did not find significant effect modification by age, sex, educational attainment, or social support.

This study examined the short- and long-term health outcomes following divorce and widowhood in a large population-based Australian sample of older men and women. The findings revealed strong and adverse short-term effects of marital disruption on health outcomes, particularly within the psychological health domain. These effects seemed to attenuate in the longer term.

A number of studies have examined the associations between marital status or marriage disruption and health, with relatively consistent findings suggesting a protective effect of marriage, and respectively detrimental effects of marital disruption. For example, systematic reviews and meta-analyses have consistently found an elevated risk of all-cause mortality in adults who are divorced 35 or widowed 1 , 8 , 9 , and the effects seemed to be mostly consistent across countries and geographic areas 1 , 9 . Wong et al. extended the outcomes for CVD and found similar associations between marital status and CVD events and mortality 4 . Our current study has extended previous research by examining a broad range of relatively proximal outcomes, and in a population-based sample ranging from middle age to the “oldest old”. Examining proximal outcomes could help understand the potential mechanisms (e.g., psychological distress, unhealthy lifestyles) for the observed association between marital disruption and distal endpoints, such as mortality. Understanding the potential mechanisms has been considered an important research agenda for future studies 35 . Involving a large sample with a broad age range allows us to examine the effect of marital disruption at different life stages, including the less researched transitions, such as divorce at an old age (grey divorce) 7 and widowhood at a younger age.

To date, several proposed mechanisms might explain the health disparities by marital status 4 . The predominant debate has centered around social selection versus causation 36 . While selection theory suggests that people with poorer health are less likely to enter or maintain long-term partnerships 4 , 36 , social causation theory postulates that marriage and partnership benefit individuals’ health through spousal support, companionship and financial stability 36 , 37 , 38 . Within the causation theory framework, it has been proposed that the stress related to spousal loss could affect physical, mental, emotional and behavioural health 4 , 36 , 38 , 39 , 40 . In the current study we tested various components of these theories by: (1) comparing baseline characteristics of participants with different marriage transitions, (2) adjusting for potential confounders that could have caused self-selection into maintained partnership, such as socioeconomic status, and (3) comparing between those who have divorced and widowed, which involve different levels of self-selection.

Based on the baseline comparison of participants with different marital transition categories, those who became divorced at T2 appeared to be distinctly different from the other categories at T1: they had around twice the prevalence of fair/poor self-rated health and quality of life, high psychological distress, anxiety, depression, and current smoking, compared with those who remained married between T1 and T2. In most cases, they had much worse health risk profiles than those who became widowed, despite the latter being significantly older. Such observations may provide supportive evidence for the social selection theory. However, given that the deterioration of marriage is a gradual process, which started from the time when couples still lived together 12 , a dysfunctional relationship could have adversely affected physical and mental health years before divorce or separation formally took place 12 . In both short- and longer-term analyses, adjusted associations were much attenuated from the unadjusted associations, suggesting that the potential characteristics underlying social selection to marriages, such as socioeconomic status, may have partially contributed to the observed “marital disruption effects”. However, the adjusted associations remained strong in most cases, implying the plausibility for a causal relationship. Finally, we found generally similar patterns of associations for divorce and widowhood; if social selection was the sole explanation for the detrimental health effects of marital disruption, then one should expect strong effects of divorce but much weaker-to-no effects of widowhood, because spousal death is usually beyond the control of the surviving spouse 24 .

As an attempt to explore different mechanistic pathways, assuming that marital disruption is causally linked to health deterioration, we tested several domains of health outcomes: health-related lifestyle behaviours, psychological outcomes, and overall health and wellbeing. Our findings suggest that most of the observed “marital disruption effects” occurred within the psychological domain, with divorce and widowhood triggering initial elevations in psychological distress, anxiety and depression. The much higher odds of smoking among those who recently divorced or widowed, similar to findings from a previous study 15 , could also be stress-related 41 . Contrary to previous studies 14 , 15 , 42 , we found no overall associations between marital disruption and physical activity or alcohol consumption. We did, however, find a positive association between divorce/widowhood and insufficient fruit and vegetable consumption. Based on a small number of studies, vegetable consumption seemed to decline in men 14 and women 15 following divorce and widowhood, and the literature has cited a lack of food preparation skills among men 14 and meal skipping as a grief reaction among women 15 . Finally, within the overall health and wellbeing domain, recently divorced and widowed individuals suffered from worsening quality of life but not self-rated health. This could be because the self-rated health question focuses on the physical manifestation of health while the quality of life question holistically captures physical, mental, emotional and other aspects of health, which are more likely to be influenced by marital disruption.

An interesting finding is that although marital disruption seemed to have a detrimental effect on various health outcomes in the short-term, after a further five years of follow-up, the effects were attenuated, and in some cases, disappeared. These findings confirmed the “divorce-stress-adjustment perspective” 12 , which postulates that marital disruption led to multiple stressors (e.g., loss of custody of children, economic decline), which, in turn, lead to negative emotional, behavioural and health outcomes. The process of “adjustment” takes time, and its severity and duration differ by individual characteristics 12 . Previous research found a similar “time effect” (where the negative consequences of marital disruption was attenuated over time) with depression 43 , first-time myocardial infarction 44 but mixed results with mortality 40 , 45 . However, it is important to distinguish our study from those with morbidity or mortality endpoints, which take longer to manifest. Given that outcomes in our study are conceptually proximal, and that most people have the psychological resilience to eventually recover from marriage disruption 46 , we could expect on average a stronger effect in the short-term than the long-term.

However, it is important to acknowledge individual differences in resilience to stressful transitions like divorce and widowhood 46 . We have tested for several potential effect modifiers and found several outcome-specific interactions. For example, overall, younger participants (aged 45–59 years at T1) seemed to have suffered more from both divorce and widowhood in terms of worsening quality of life and increasing psychological distress. This finding is concordant with previous research on marital transition and mortality 9 . In terms of psychological distress, participants with high educational attainment seemed to have coped with divorce the best but widowhood the worst. This is a new and unexpected finding and may be related to the higher levels of independence, resources and support among those with higher socioeconomic status to cope with an expected traumatic event, such as divorce. Widowhood is less planned and more permanent and may exert severe emotional stress on individuals in the short-term, regardless of skills, resources and support. Divorce had a much stronger impact on depression in men than women, which is consistent with the literature on divorce and mortality 8 , 9 . It has been documented that men are more likely to dramatically lose supportive social ties 9 and experience declined social support from their children following a divorce 47 . Finally, interestingly, women who were widowed seemed to have benefited from reduced heavy alcohol consumption. A previous study in France found that women decreased heavy drinking prior to and at the time of widowhood 48 . Some evidence suggests that husbands may influence wives’ drinking behaviour 49 , it is plausible that the death of a husband may be associated with reduced drinking occasions.

Limitations

The current study is the first to our knowledge to examine short- and longer-term effects of marital disruption on a broad range of physical, psychological and behavioural health outcomes in middle-aged and older adults. Strengths include a population-based sample, comprehensive proximal health outcomes, and examination of both divorce and widowhood. However, findings should be interpreted in light of limitations. First, some relevant information was not collected by the 45 and Up Study, such as relationship quality, the exact time of marital transition (we could only infer that the event happened between T1 and T2), the long-term cumulative marital history (e.g., the total number of marriages and broken relationships) 35 . Such information is important to further elucidate whether the adverse health effects of marital disruption are due to social selection or causation. While this study focused on marital disruption, the other type of marital transition, namely remarriage could further affect health behaviours and outcomes. However, we did not model this transition because of the small number of participants who remarried and the lack of repeated measures to ascertain long-term effects of remarriage. Second, there was some evidence for selection bias as those who became divorced or widowed by T2 were more likely to become lost to follow-up by T3 (Supplementary file). Third, the number of participants who became divorced or widowed during the study follow-up was small, limiting the power of detecting potential associations and effect modification. Fourth, the 45 and Up Study cohort was not population representative and participants were on average healthier than the general population. However, a study comparing the current cohort with a population representative sample in New South Wales found the estimates for the associations between risk factors and health outcomes to be similar, despite the differences in risk factor prevalence 50 . Finally, it is important to note that the current study was conducted based on a sample aged 45 years and above and we only examined the effects of marital disruption in midlife and at an older age. Findings may not generalise to younger populations.

Conclusions

This current Australian study extends previous evidence on marital transition and health and suggests that marital disruption can be a vulnerable life stage, particularly for certain subgroups, such as men. Findings from the study have important public health implications. Given the ubiquitous and inevitable nature of marital disruption, it is important to raise public awareness of its potential health effects and develop strategies to help individuals navigate such difficult life transitions. Physicians and other health practitioners who have access to regularly updated patient information may play an important role in identifying at-risk individuals, monitoring their health and referring them to potential interventions and support programs.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Sax Institute upon application and payment, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of the Sax Institute.

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Acknowledgements

This research was completed using data collected through the 45 and Up Study ( www.saxinstitute.org.au ). The 45 and Up Study is managed by the Sax Institute in collaboration with major partner Cancer Council NSW; and partners: the National Heart Foundation of Australia (NSW Division); NSW Ministry of Health; NSW Government Family & Community Services—Ageing, Careers and the Disability Council NSW; and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. We thank the many thousands of people participating in the 45 and Up Study.

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D.D. conceptualised the research idea, D.D. and J.G. conducted data analysis, B.N. and D.D. conducted the literature review, D.D. drafted the manuscript with B.N. contributing to parts of the manuscript, all authors critically revised the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Ding, D., Gale, J., Bauman, A. et al. Effects of divorce and widowhood on subsequent health behaviours and outcomes in a sample of middle-aged and older Australian adults. Sci Rep 11 , 15237 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93210-y

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Divorce and health: current trends and future directions

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1 From the Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.
PMID: 25829240
PMCID: PMC4397145
DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000168

Objective: Social relationships play a vital role in health and well-being, and it follows that loss experiences can be highly stressful for some people. This article reviews what is known about the association between marital separation, divorce, and health outcomes.

Methods: Key findings in the area of divorce and health are discussed, and the review outlines a series of specific questions for future research. In particular, the article integrates research in social epidemiology with research in social psychophysiology. The former approach provides a broad-based estimate of the association between marital status and health outcomes, whereas the latter approach studies mechanisms of action and individual differences associated with increased risk for poor outcomes.

Results: The experience of separation or divorce confers risk for poor health outcomes, including a 23% higher mortality rate. However, most people cope well and are resilient after their marriage or long-term relationship ends. Despite the fact that resilience is the most common response, a small percentage of people (approximately 10%-15%) struggle quite substantially, and it seems that the overall elevated adverse health risks are driven by the poor functioning of this group. Several candidate mechanisms and novel (ambulatory) assessment techniques that may elucidate the poor outcomes among people who adapt poorly to separation are discussed.

Conclusions: To increase knowledge on the association between divorce and health, three primary areas require more research: a) genetic and third variable explanations for divorce-related health outcomes, (b) better studies of objective social behavior after separation, and (c) increased attention to interventions targeting high-risk adults.

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Divorce and Health

Current trends and future directions.

Sbarra, David A. PhD

From the Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.

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Address correspondence and reprint requests to David A. Sbarra, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, 1503 E. University Blvd, Rm 312, Tucson, AZ 85721-0068. E-mail: [email protected]

Received for publication July 28, 2014; revision received October 27, 2014.

Objective

Social relationships play a vital role in health and well-being, and it follows that loss experiences can be highly stressful for some people. This article reviews what is known about the association between marital separation, divorce, and health outcomes.

Methods

Key findings in the area of divorce and health are discussed, and the review outlines a series of specific questions for future research. In particular, the article integrates research in social epidemiology with research in social psychophysiology. The former approach provides a broad-based estimate of the association between marital status and health outcomes, whereas the latter approach studies mechanisms of action and individual differences associated with increased risk for poor outcomes.

Results

The experience of separation or divorce confers risk for poor health outcomes, including a 23% higher mortality rate. However, most people cope well and are resilient after their marriage or long-term relationship ends. Despite the fact that resilience is the most common response, a small percentage of people (approximately 10%–15%) struggle quite substantially, and it seems that the overall elevated adverse health risks are driven by the poor functioning of this group. Several candidate mechanisms and novel (ambulatory) assessment techniques that may elucidate the poor outcomes among people who adapt poorly to separation are discussed.

Conclusions

To increase knowledge on the association between divorce and health, three primary areas require more research: a) genetic and third variable explanations for divorce-related health outcomes, (b) better studies of objective social behavior after separation, and (c) increased attention to interventions targeting high-risk adults.

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The Causal Effects of Parental Divorce and Parental Temporary Separation on Children’s Cognitive Abilities and Psychological Well-being According to Parental Relationship Quality

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Published: 27 July 2020
Volume 161 , pages 963–987, ( 2022 )

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We explore the effects of parental divorce and parental temporary separation on well-being of children at a specific stage of their development according to the parental relationship quality. Despite the importance of this subject, among previous studies only few consider very young children and are based on statistical methods properly tailored to enhance causal evaluations. We attempt to establish the effects on both cognitive abilities and psychological dimensions of children at age five by using data drawn from the first three waves of the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Using an appropriate imputation method, we apply the augmented inverse propensity treatment weighted estimator to infer causality. Overcoming some of the limitations of previous research, we find that the dissolution of high-quality parental unions has the most harmful effects on children, especially concerning conduct problems. We demonstrate the substantial variation on consequences of parental divorce depending on the level of parental relationship quality. We show that parental temporary separation is a type of family disruption that has significant negative effects on young children. In fact, we infer that they have more conduct and hyperactivity problems than children from stable or divorced families. Our results also suggest children to be targeted with appropriate policies aimed to reduce the adverse effect of family disruption.

Parental breakup and children’s development: the role of time and of post-separation conditions

Floor Effects or Compensation of Social Origin? The Relation Between Divorce and Children’s School Engagement According to Parents’ Educational Level

Childhood behavioral problems are associated with the intergenerational transmission of low education: a 16-year population-based study.

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1 Introduction

Parental divorce and union dissolution is an increasingly common experience for children in all developed countries. It has raised the debate on whether parental divorce is damaging for children’s well-being and to what extent parents should remain together for the sake of the children. In accordance with this social concern, one of the most extensively discussed topics in the literature has been the average effects of divorce on children well-being. Many social surveys have been considered and various statistical methods have been used putting special emphasis on controlling for parental relationship quality and conflict prior to separation but often without considering that parental conflict does not always precede separation. In fact, a large percentage of low-distress couples divorce, a phenomena that has increased substantially in recent decades (Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ).

For this reason, some studies in the last two decades have offered a more nuanced explanation of the causality of divorce that focuses on the heterogeneity of divorce effects by parental relationship quality (Amato et al. 1995 ; Jekielek 1998 ; Hanson 1999 ; Strohschein 2005 ). They take into account in which way divorce affects different children, either positively or negatively, instead of concentrating on the average causal effect of divorce across the board (Amato 2010 ). These studies suggest that divorce may be a positive experience for children from high-distress marriages, while the dissolution of low-distress marriages may have opposite effects (Amato et al. 1995 ; Booth and Amato 2001 ). Despite the significant ramifications of these findings, to the best of the author’s knowledge only few studies have examined the heterogeneity of the consequences of parental divorce by the level of parental relationship quality. These studies (for instance, see: Amato et al. 1995 ; Jekielek 1998 ; Hanson 1999 ; Morrison and Coiro 1999 ; Booth and Amato 2001 ; Strohschein 2005 ; Fomby and Osborne 2010 ; Yu et al. 2010 ; Kalmijn 2015 ) present the following characteristics: a ) only two are based on non-US data, and only few use nationally representative samples or methods to infer causality; b ) they have mainly analyzed children’s psychological well-being while evidence on other children’s outcomes such as cognitive development is scarce; c ) the most of them focus solely on children in middle childhood or older. Amato ( 2010 ), in his most recent review of the literature, encourages more research concerning this issue. We use a national large sample with several cases of divorce and temporary separations among parents and cohabiting couples representing the current trend in the Western societies. We explore the effects both on the psychological well-being and cognitive development of the children. We investigate if and how these effects are different according to parental relationship quality. The latter is measured in a way to capture not only parental conflicts before separation but also communication, affection and emotions among the couple. We use the first three waves of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) which is a nationally representative longitudinal study of a cohort of British children born from 2000 to 2002 in the UK. We move forward from previous work and contribute in respect to the analysis of the interrelationships between family disruption, parental relationship quality and children’s psychological well-being and cognitive development. First, we test whether the hypothesis of heterogeneity of divorce effects by parental relationship quality is also true for children from UK. Second, we aim to assess whether this hypothesis is also valid for young children since only Fomby and Osborne ( 2010 ) account for very young children and do not find evidence of heterogeneity of divorce by parental relationship quality. We have specifically focused on a salient period of children’s lives, namely the transition to school. It is well-demonstrated that children who enter school without the necessary cognitive or socio-emotional skills have greater academic and behavioral difficulties during their school years and beyond than their more “school-ready” counterparts (Romano et al. 2010 ). Third, we aim to assess the heterogeneity hypothesis by improving and extending the methodological and analytical approach proposed in the literature. We focus on many of children’s outcomes rather than just on one or two since we consider the following multiple dimensions of children’s school readiness: three different cognitive abilities (verbal, problem-solving and spatial abilities) and five psychological dimensions (conduct, hyperactivity, internalizing and peer problems, and pro-social behavior). Unlike previous research on parental divorce, we use the Augmented Inverse Propensity Treatment Weighted (AIPTW, Robins et al. 2000 ) estimator in order to yield robust estimates of the effects of interest and an imputation method based on the statistical methodology of chained equations (Raghunathan et al. 2001 ), which allows us to jointly impute missing data for different types of variables. Furthermore, in previous research on the interplay between parental divorce, parental relationship quality and children’s outcomes, the fact that a significant proportion of parents separate only temporarily was not considered. Little is known about the level of relationship quality of these parents before separation and the risks children experience when they face this type of family disruption (Kiernan et al. 2011 ; Nepomnyaschy and Teitler 2013 ).

In sum, by using cohort data similar to that used by Fomby and Osborne ( 2010 ), we aim to test the following three hypotheses: i ) parental relationship quality and family disruption are unrelated processes that have independent effects on children (the independent hypothesis); ii ) the negative association between family disruption and children’s well-being may be spurious because poor relationship quality is related to both family disruption and poor children well-being (the selection hypothesis); iii ) the consequences of family disruption on children are contingent on the level of parental relationship quality experienced prior to this event (the heterogeneity hypothesis). To test this third hypothesis about the heterogeneity of the effects of family disruption by parental relationship quality is the main contribution of our study.

The paper is structured as follows. In Sect. 2 we provide a background section considering the effects of family disruption on children well-being, then we focus on the conceptual framework. In Sect. 3 we describe data and methods. In Sect. 4 we show the main results. In Sect. 5 we provide a discussion. The supplementary material provides further details on data, missing data imputation and additional tables with results.

2 Background

2.1 family disruption on children well-being.

Studies on the effects of parental divorce on children’s well-being that use ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic models show that part of this effect is spurious and it is only partially explained by parental relationship quality (Hanson 1999 ). Since the late 1990s, several studies have used more innovative research designs to identify the independent effects of parental divorce and father absence such as lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual and sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments and instrumental variables, and propensity score matching. McLanahan et al. ( 2013 ) review these studies and find consistent evidence that parental divorce exerts negative effects on the well-being of offspring. They also show that this evidence is stronger for children’s socio-emotional development, especially in externalizing problems, than for children’s cognitive ability. Nevertheless, they present the following features: a ) most studies of the effect that of parental divorce on cognitive and psychological development are based on US samples b ) very few studies focus on children who experience parental divorce in early childhood, and c ) only one (Strohschein 2005 ) explores the heterogeneity of divorce effects by the quality of the parental relationship prior to separation.

A weakness of existing research is that it does not consider parents who separate only temporarily. Recent studies observe that a non-negligible proportion of parents separate for a short time period and then re-partner with the same person (Kiernan et al. 2011 ; Nepomnyaschy and Teitler 2013 ). However, as stated by Nepomnyaschy and Teitler ( 2013 , 3) “in most studies, this family ‘type’ is usually classified as either intact or separated (depending on when cohabitation status is ascertained), but it may differ in many respects from both of those groups”. The reason this type of family disruption is scarcely considered in previous research is that most studies only use two waves of survey data, and at least three waves are necessary to detect it. The existing research on the characteristics of parents who only separate temporarily show that such couples have a more disadvantaged socio-demographic background than with continuously intact relationships (Kiernan et al. 2011 ; Nepomnyaschy and Teitler 2013 ). Despite that, the only two studies that analyze the consequences of temporary separation on children well-being find evidence of a negative effect, even when controlling for several socio-demographic characteristics (Kiernan et al. 2011 ; Nepomnyaschy and Teitler 2013 ). However, no study controls for the relationship quality of parents before separation and some evidence suggest that couples who separate temporarily have a lower relationship quality than stable couples long before separation occurs (Vennum et al. 2014 ). Thus, if poor parental relationship quality may cause temporary separation, then it is difficult to rule out the possibility that the negative association between parental temporary separation and children’s outcomes may be due to relationship quality rather than this event per se.

2.2 Heterogeneity of the Effects of Parental Divorce by Parental Relationship Quality

2.2.1 conceptual framework.

Two main explanations are provided regarding the heterogeneity of the effects of parental divorce Footnote 1 by parental relationship quality. One is the stress relief hypothesis (Wheaton 1990 ) which concerns the consequences of transitions in life roles. Wheaton ( 1990 , 210) stated that “…instead of being stressful, life events may at times be either non-problematic or even beneficial, offering escape from a chronically stressful role situation, creating the apparent paradox of more ‘stress’ functioning as stress relief”. According to this perspective, the stressful event of parental divorce may be beneficial for children whose parental relationship prior to divorce has been poor, as it takes them away from an aversive and stressful home environment. After divorce, these children should enjoy an improvement in their well-being since they no longer experience the parental conflict (Booth and Amato 2001 ; Strohschein 2005 ).

By contrast, the dissolution of low-distress parental relationships may be detrimental to children’s development. Children from relatively harmonious families may not benefit from divorce, since it is unlikely that they experience this event as stress relief. For these children, divorce may instead give rise to stressful situations such as a decline in their standard of living, moving to a poorer neighborhood, changing schools, and losing contact with the non-custodial parent (Amato 2010 ). Children from non-dysfunctional families may also begin to experience parental discord after separation, since issues such as custody, childrearing, visitation, and child support are potentially conflictual (Booth and Amato 2001 ).

In addition to changes in stress, children’s understanding and perceptions of divorce depend on the level of their parents’ pre-divorce relationship problems, another factor related to children’s adjustment after separation. Children who have witnessed parental disputes may anticipate their parents’ divorce and attribute it to external reasons, such as parental conflict, as argued by Booth and Amato ( 2001 ). For children from low-distress families, by contrast, divorce might come as more of a surprise and they might see divorce as a threat to their happiness. Booth and Amato ( 2001 ) give possible reasons as to how an unexpected divorce may adversely impact on children. First, for these children, it is more difficult to comprehend and accept the reasons for their parents’ separation. As Maes et al. ( 2012 , 276) state: “if children do not understand why their parents have divorced, they make up their own story around things they do know, increasing the danger that children will blame themselves”. Second, children who do not anticipate parental divorce may feel that they have little control over events in their lives (Booth and Amato 2001 ). Children’s self-blame and locus of control are, in turn, negatively related to their adjustment after divorce (Bussell 1996 ; Kim et al. 1997 ).

Are these useful in explaining the heterogeneity of parental divorce for infants and very young children? The explanation of children’s understanding and perceptions of divorce is unlikely to be valid for very young children due to the kind of reasoning needed for children to be able to anticipate this event and blame themselves for it. The stress relief explanation developed for older children and adults, however, can also be applied to infants and very young children. There is a growing and consistent body of research documenting that the exposure to poor parental relationship quality during infancy affects children’s well-being cross-sectionally during infancy and longitudinally during their pre-school years (Fitzgerald 2010 ; Graham et al. 2013 ; Zhou, Cao and Leerkes 2017 ). For example, a possible mechanism is that parental conflict experienced by infants is associated with neural responses to emotional tone of voice, particularly very angry speech (Graham et al. 2013 ). With the existing evidence, it is reasonable to assume that if parental conflict produces stress in infants, then when parental divorce occurs this source of stress will disappear and their well-being will improve.

The second explanation does not focus on the consequences of direct exposure of infants to parental conflict but highlights an indirect pathway through parental well-being: parental relationship quality moderates the effect of parental divorce on very young children because parental relationship quality also moderates the effect of divorce on parent’s well-being. To our knowledge, this explanation has not been mentioned by previous research and is based on two main premises. First, it has been largely demonstrated that parents’ emotional adjustment after divorce is an important predictor of children’s well-being (Amato 1993 ) and that parents’ emotional problems are also clearly associated with adverse children’s outcomes during infancy and early childhood (Petterson and Albers 2001 ; Kiernan and Huerta 2008 ). In addition to that, few empirical studies that have focused on this topic predominantly show that people who enjoyed a high relationship quality prior to divorce suffer the most harmful negative effects on their emotional well-being (for instance, see Wheaton 1990 ; Booth and Amato 2001 ; Williams 2003 ; Waite et al. 2009 ; Ye et al. 2017 ). For people with low levels of relationship quality, the findings are mixed. Some studies give support to the hypothesis that divorce is beneficial for the emotional well-being of people in highly conflictual or unsatisfactory relationships (for instance, see: Wheaton 1990 ; Williams 2003 ; Amato and Hohmann-Marriott 2007 ; Ye et al. 2017 ). Others find evidence that when people divorce from an unsatisfactory relationship, they experience a decrease in their emotional well-being but to a lesser extent than those who divorce from satisfactory relationships (Kalmijn and Monden 2006 ; Waite et al. 2009 ). For these reasons, it seems plausible to hypothesize that if divorce has the most harmful effects on parents who enjoyed a high level of relationship quality, their children would also experience the most harmful effects of this event.

2.2.2 Previous Research

To the extent of our knowledge the current research is based on the possible data according to the characteristics of the sample at the time and on the best method of analysis. Confidence in research findings increases when studies are based on a nationally representative sample with a large sample size. Some studies have less than 300 cases in the divorce group, and only three (Hanson 1999 ; Strohschein 2005 ; Kalmijn 2015 ) use nationally representative surveys. The majority of samples are based on American children, with the exception of Kalmijn ( 2015 ) and Strohschein ( 2005 ), and there is not enough evidence to conclude the hypothesis of heterogeneity of divorce effects is valid in all Western countries or if this hypothesis is country-specific. With exception of Fomby and Osborne ( 2010 ), all relevant studies examine only children whose parents are married; they exclude the large and increasing proportion of children who are living with their biological cohabiting parents (Kiernan et al. 2011 ).

Concerning the characteristics of the outcomes and focal variables we observe that seven of the nine studies in this field used the psychological well-being of offspring; there is less consistent evidence of variation in divorce effects in other important outcomes. Among studies concerning the heterogeneity of divorce, only one focus on educational achievement (Hanson 1999 ). For this reason, with the existing research, it is not possible to say whether the hypothesis about the heterogeneity of divorce effects is valid for most children’s outcomes, or only for psychological ones.

In addition, existing research does not focus on a specific stage of children’s development. Instead, samples are used with great variation in the children’s ages at the time of divorce, and the age when response variables are measured. Most studies look at children who experienced parental divorce over a wide range of ages (Booth and Amato 2001 ; Hanson 1999 ; Kalmijn 2015 ). In some of them, divorce occurred any time from when the children were born to when they were adults. Only Fomby and Osborne ( 2010 ) focus on a specific stage of children’s development namely parental divorce that occurs before age 3, and the response variable is measured at age 3. Second, as mentioned, studies finding evidence in favor of the heterogeneity hypothesis analyze children’s outcomes measured during middle childhood and/or adolescence (Hanson 1999 ; Jekielek 1998 ; Morrison and Coiro 1999 ; Strohschein 2005 ) or adulthood (Amato et al. 1995 ; Booth and Amato 2001 ; Yu et al. 2010 ; Kalmijn 2015 ) and the only paper that does not support this hypothesis focuses on outcomes in very young children (Fomby and Osborne 2010 ). These contradictory results may suggest that the effects of divorce only vary by parental relationship quality for children in middle childhood or older. However, with only one study on very young children, there is not enough evidence to conclude whether divorce effects are heterogeneous depending on the age of the child at the time of divorce and/or the age when the outcomes were measured.

3 Materials and Methods

The data correspond to the first three waves of Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) which is a high-quality profile survey representative for the UK (Plewis et al. 2000 ; Hansen and Joshi 2007 ; Plewis 2007 ; Hansen et al. 2012 ). The first sweep was carried out between September 2000 and January 2002. It contains information on 18,819 babies from 18,533 families, collected from the parents when the babies were 9–11 months old. The families were contacted again when the children were aged 3 and 5 years. The response rates achieved for the second (2004/05) and third (2006) waves were 78% and 79% of the target sample, respectively. More than two-thirds of the sample (around 69% representing 13,234 families) responded in all three waves (Ketende 2010 ). The MCS sample design allowed for over-representation of families living in areas with high rates of child poverty and/or high proportions of ethnic minorities. Survey methods were used to take account of the initial sampling design, and adjustments were made for non-response in the recruitment of the original sample and sample attrition over the follow-up period to age five. Footnote 2

We consider children whose family structure is available for all the first three waves of the MCS. The sample includes only singleton children and families where the mother is the main respondent at the first wave. More details on the data and on how we handle missing values are available in Section A1 of the supplementary material.

3.2 Variables

3.2.1 response variables.

The variables of interest for school readiness are measured when children are 5 years old, at the third wave. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (Goodman 1997 ) assesses children’s behavioral adjustment and is answered by the mother. The SDQ is made up of five subscales assessing emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity or inattention problems, peer problems, and pro-social behavior. Each subscale has five items with scores ranging from 0 to 2. Children’s cognitive development is assessed by using the British Ability Scales (BAS II) (Elliott et al. 1997 ). The following BAS subscales were used to measure different domains of cognitive development: the naming vocabulary test, which assesses expressive language; the picture similarities test, which measures pictorial reasoning; and the pattern construction test, which assesses spatial ability. These were conducted by an interviewer at home. The three tests assess the three most significant information-processing skills: verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and spatial abilities (Hill 2005 ). A standardized score is computed for each cohort member according to his/her age band considered every three months. Table 1 shows the average scores for the response variables stratified according to the family situation at age 5 as defined in the following section. Children experiencing parental temporary separation or parental divorce shows lightly more psychological problems and lower scores for cognitive development with respect to children with stable family.

3.2.2 Focal Variables

We use the first three waves of the survey to create the following main family situations: children that experience parental divorce are those whose parents were together (married or cohabiting) until they were at least 9 months old, but who divorced when they were aged between 9 months and 5 years (N = 1177); children that experience parental temporary separation are those whose parents were together (married or cohabiting) when they were born and when they were 9 months and 5 years old (N = 277); however, on one or more occasions, their parents spent more than one month living apart; children in stable families are those whose parents remained in stable married or cohabiting unions from their birth until age 5 (N = 9001).

Partnership quality was derived from the Golombok Rust Inventory of Marital State (GRIMS, Rust et al. 1990 ) which is a psychometric instrument for the assessment of marital discord and the overall quality of a couple’s relationship. We only used the GRIMS scale for responses from the mother, as the fathers’ questionnaire showed a high percentage of missing cases. We use this scale at the first wave (9 months) since it has seven items, as opposed to four items in the subsequent waves.

The following four items, the responses to which were collected at the first wave assess the negative aspects of relationship quality: (1) “my partner doesn’t seem to listen to me”; (2) “sometimes I feel lonely even when I am with my partner”; (3) “I wish there was more warmth and affection between us”; and (4) “I suspect we may be on the brink of separation”. The other three items assess the positive aspects of relationship quality: (1) “my partner is usually sensitive to and aware of my needs”; (2) “our relationship is full of joy and excitement”; and (3) “we can always make up quickly after an argument”. The item responses consist of the following: strongly agree (0); agree (1); neither agree nor disagree (2); disagree (3); strongly disagree (4) and can’t say (5). “Can’t say” responses were considered as missing information. To create an ordinal scale, we included both the positive and the negative items, which involved reversing the answers to the positive items. For these items the answers were: strongly disagree (0); disagree (1); neither agree nor disagree (2); agree (3); strongly agree (4). We then added up respondents’ answers to the seven items, which produced a scale with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 28.

Most studies, also due to few observed divorced couples, consider the heterogeneity of divorce by accounting for an interaction between parental divorce and the continuous variable measuring parental relationship quality. They assume that the magnitude and sign of the interaction effect is the same across any value of the relationship quality and they do not allow the extent to which the effect of parental divorce diverges in according to the intensity of the relation to be examined. Only Fomby and Osborne ( 2010 ) use a binary variable to identify couples with a low relationship quality if the reported value is below the 25th percentile of the sample distribution. We consider the quartiles of the empirical distribution and we account for the following ordered categories of decreasing union quality: very good, good, poor and very poor. We choose this specification to obtain a more accurate portrayal of children who experience especially poor and very poor parental relationship quality.

Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics of the family situation according to parental relationship quality. In the sample 86% belong to stable family, 11% experience parental divorce and around 3% experience parental temporary separation. The percentages of those reporting different levels of relationship quality are quite similar: 28% and 20% reported high and low quality relationships, respectively. The data reveal that parents who remained together from wave 1 (children were 9 months old) to wave 3 (children were 5 years old) had better relationship quality on average than those who divorced or experienced some period of separation. Comparing the two types of family disruption, parents who subsequently divorce exhibit worse relationship quality than those who only temporarily separate. At wave 1, around 18% of parents in stable family reported the lowest relationship quality compared with 32% of those who later separated temporarily and 39% of those who later divorced. Hence, in accordance with the selection hypothesis, a large number of children with divorced parents were exposed to poor union quality before parental separation. However, contrary to this hypothesis, Table 2 also shows that a considerable proportion of parents who divorced had not experienced poor relationship quality prior to ending their relationship. Among children whose parents divorced, around 17% and 22% belonged to families with the highest (q 1 ) and high (q 2 ) relationship quality, respectively. It is important to acknowledge that children whose parents had the highest relationship quality at wave 1 could experience poor parental relationship quality after this wave and prior to their parents’ divorce since this event occurs between wave 1 and wave 3 of the survey.

Although the percentages show that a large proportion of divorced parents reported the lowest level of relationship quality before separation, the row percentages demonstrate that the majority of parents with poor-quality relationships do not separate. Approximately three-quarters (73%) of mothers with the lowest level of relationship quality at wave 1 remained in a relationship with the father of their child four years later.

Overall, considering only values from Tables 1 and 2 , we cannot say whether the observed differences on school readiness between children from different family situations are explained by differences in parental relationship quality pre-dating the experience of family disruption.

3.2.3 Control Variables

The control variables illustrated in Table 3 are measured when children were 9 months old (wave 1), namely before parental separation took place, and took into account several socio-demographic characteristics related to family disruption and children’s well-being (Booth and Amato 1991 , 2001 ; Wilson and Waddoups 2002 ; Amato and Hohmann-Marriott 2007 ; Kiernan and Huerta 2008 ; Brown 2004 ; Kiernan and Mensah 2009 ; Brooks-Gunn et al. 2010 ; Muluk et al. 2014 ; Idstad et al. 2015 ; Karraker and Latham 2015 ; Oláh and Gähler 2014 ; Sabates and Dex 2015 ).

Concerning the social exchange theory (Levinger 1976 ) we include into the rewards and costs the following variables to control for the selection into family disruption: family income, housing tenure, mother’s educational attainment and ethnicity, mother’s health (depression and longstanding illness) and the presence of half- or step-siblings at home. We consider the following variables as barriers to family disruption: paid work status of the mother; whether the mother lived with someone else as a couple before living with the father of the child; type of parental union (married directly, cohabitation before marriage, or cohabitation); year that parents began living together as a couple; whether parents grew up in a non-stable family and mother’s attitudes to single-parent upbringing. Instrumental support is measured by the following response provided by the mother: “If I had financial problems, I know my family would help if they could”. Finally, another group of control variables is related to the division of unpaid work, which is associated with the probability of divorce: who is mostly responsible for household tasks and who is generally with and looking after the children.

3.3 Methods and Analytical Strategy

The effect of parental divorce (or parental temporary separation) on children’s outcomes is evaluated under the framework of counterfactual reasoning or Potential Outcomes (POs) (Rubin 1974 , Holland and Rosenbaum 1986 ). In this context, we are interested to estimate the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) that is conceived as the difference between the expected values of the POs of the children in the treated and untreated condition. We refer to the POs of individual exposed to treatment as $ Y_{i}^{\left( 1 \right)} $ and not exposed as $ Y_{i}^{\left( 0 \right)} $ for each i , i = 1,…, n . The treatment is provided only to a fraction of the units, and it is denoted by a binary variable Z i that is equal to 1 if the individual i is treated and to 0 if he/she is not treated. The treatment effect is defined as the difference $ Y_{i}^{\left( 1 \right)} - Y_{i}^{\left( 0 \right)} $ and the same value over the population is the ATE defined as the expected value of the POs as follows

The realized outcome for individual i is given by

In this framework, the outcomes of the children whose parents are divorced or temporary separated are only observed in the presence of the treatment conditions and the outcomes of the children in stable families are only observed in the absence of treatment. That is, a child can experience parental divorce or can live in a stable family from 9 months to age 5. As recently stated by Kim ( 2011 ) the ATE joints the realized developmental outcomes for children had experienced divorce or temporary separation and the counterfactual outcomes for these children had their parents remained together. The effects of family disruption on children’s outcomes can be assessed only on average in this non-experimental study, since each child belongs to one of the treatment or to the control group and one PO is always not realized. Children experiencing family disruption may be not randomly selected, and the family characteristics that determine the disruption may also affect the child’s well-being through other pathways (McLanahan et al. 2013 ).

The Propensity Score (PS, Rosenbaum and Rubin 1983 ) is a multivariate statistical matching method proposed for data collected in non-experimental contexts aimed to reduce the bias of the estimator of the treatment effect by considering the observed pre-treatment covariates (Rosenbaum 2020 ). The PS concerns the conditional probability of the treatment (the probability of experiencing parental divorce or parental temporary separation) given the observed pre-treatment covariates. This aims to mimic an experimental context especially when the observational data are rich as in the context of this application where similar questionnaires are administered to the participants. For estimating the ATE the weighted regression estimator (Rosenbaum 1987 ) defined as the Inverse Propensity Treatment Weighted (IPTW) estimator (Robins et al. 2000 ) weights each unit according to the estimated inverse probability of receiving the treatment actually received. The weights are obtained as the inverse of the estimated PS and in this context they allow us to compare children exposed to divorce despite their low probability of exposure and children not-exposed to divorce. We use observable pre-treatment covariates collected into the column vector $ \varvec{X}_{i} $ whose realized values are denoted with $ \varvec{x}_{i} $ for i = 1, …, n . We assume that conditional to the pre-treatment covariates the average outcomes in the treated and control groups in the absence of treatment would be the same. Another assumption is defined as strong ignorability (Rosenbaum and Rubin 1983 ) and postulates that given the pre-treatment covariates the treatment choice is independent of the POs. The positivity assumption is also required meaning that each treatment level occurs with some positive probability. This is also defined overlap assumption since it implies that the support of the conditional distribution of the covariates x i given Z i = 0 overlaps completely with the conditional distribution of x i given Z i = 1 (Imbens and Wooldridge 2009 ).

Disposing of a sample of n independent units, the IPTW estimator uses weights estimated through the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the multiple logistic regression model given by

In this way it is possible to mimic a pseudo-population in which the covariates are balanced between treated and untreated individuals. The Augmented IPTW (AIPTW) estimator has the smallest asymptotic variance among the class of the IPTW estimators (Robins et al. 1994 ) and it is obtained according to the proposal of Lunceford and Davidian ( 2004 ) as follows:

where $ \hat{f}\left(Y_i= {y_{i} |\varvec{v}_{i} } \right) $ denotes the multiple linear regression model estimated for the observed responses by using ordinary least squares or robust inferential methods with $ \varvec{v}_{i} $ denoting the vector of the observed covariates. All the relevant covariates should be included in the sets $ \varvec{x}_{i} $ and $ \varvec{v}_{i} $ . We propose to apply the AIPTW estimator since it corrects for possible mis-specifications in the PS model or in POs model and it is statistically more robust with respect to other methods. The so-called “double robustness” property (Bang and Robins 2005 ; Neugebauer and van der Laan 2005 ) implies that the estimator remains consistent if the POs or PS model are incorrectly specified, see among others, Cao et al. ( 2009 ) and Glynn and Quinn ( 2010 ). When the estimated weights are too large Robins et al. ( 2000 ) propose to truncate such weights up to a specified threshold, preventing to some units being highly influential.

The analytical strategy we follow is to consider the three hypotheses illustrated in the introduction and to show the results according to the following steps. First, we estimate the ATEs of parental divorce and parental temporary separation including the available covariates in the PS model shown in Table 3 and accounting also for the overall weights to consider attrition and the initial sampling design. We estimate the POs model by considering all the variables most directly related to the children’s living conditions selected according to the knowledge in the field. They are the following: sex of the child; number of children at home; mother’s education, ethnicity and labor force participation; household income; housing tenure; mother’s longstanding illness and depression, and type of parental union. Second, to evaluate the selection hypothesis we estimate the ATE including the parental relationship quality in the POs and PS models. Third, to evaluate the heterogeneity for parental divorce we estimate the ATE by considering the quartiles of the variable relationship quality in the POs and PS models. The heterogeneity hypothesis is not considered for children experiencing parental temporary separation. The three steps are repeated for every outcome by considering each time five imputed datasets in order to account for missing values. More details are provided in Section A1 of the supplementary material.

4.1 Average Effects of Family Disruption on Children’s Well-being

In order to evaluate i ) the independent and ii ) the selection hypotheses, we compare the following two models: Model 1, which only includes control variables, and Model 2, which also considers parental relationship quality in both outcome and treatment models. Table 4 reports the results for each psychological and cognitive dimension. As expected, this covariate is significant in predicting the probability of parental divorce and parental temporary separation for each dimension. We refer to Section A2 of the supplementary material for some additional results for conduct problems where we show the estimated regression coefficients of the covariates included in the PO and PS models (Table A1 and A2, respectively). Concerning the results showed in Table 4 we notice that the estimated ATE of parental divorce is significant for all the psychological dimensions and except for the picture similarity test in Model 1 for all the other cognitive dimensions. However, when parental relationship quality is introduced among the control variables (Model 2), the effect of parental divorce is not significant for internalizing problems and peer problems. For conduct and hyperactivity problems, the magnitude of the effect of parental divorce is still significant but is considerably reduced. For conduct problems, parental divorce increases the average score of 0.244 points (Model 1) with respect to the score of children in stable family but this average score decreases to 0.162 when parental relationship quality is included (Model 2). For hyperactivity, the effect of parental divorce is 0.407 in Model 1 and 0.241 in Model 2. By considering parental relationship quality the ATE is reduced of around 34% for conduct problems and around 41% for hyperactivity problems Footnote 3 . Unexpectedly, the effect of parental divorce on pro-social behavior becomes significant in Model 2. For the cognitive dimension, the estimated effect of parental divorce in Model 1 is significant for all cognitive variables with the exception of the picture similarity test. Unlike the results for the most psychological variables, when parental relationship quality is included (Model 2), the effect of parental divorce does not decrease for the pattern construction test, and even increases slightly for the vocabulary test.

The effect of parental temporary separation is not significant in any model for internalizing, peer problems and pro-social behavior. In contrast, parental temporary separation has a significant negative effect on children’s hyperactivity and conduct in both models. For parental divorce, parental relationship quality does not reduce the effect of parental temporary separation in any of these psychological dimensions. It is also important to point out that for conduct and for hyperactivity problems, the magnitude of the effect of parental temporary separation is greater than the effect of parental divorce. The results of Model 2 show that the estimated PO mean for the conduct scores of children in stable family is 1.287. Parental temporary separation increases this score by an average of 0.384 while parental divorce increases it by an average of 0.162. In other words, the effect of parental temporary separation increases conduct problems by around 30% while parental divorce only increases conduct problems by around 16%. Similar differences result for hyperactivity problems. Turning to cognitive variables, the effect of parental temporary separation is not significant in any model for the pattern construction and vocabulary tests and this effect is only significant in Model 1 for the picture similarity test.

4.2 Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Divorce According to Parental Relationship Quality

The third hypothesis is evaluated according to the results showed in Table 5 reporting the ATE estimated according to the relationship quality. With regard to the psychological dimension, the effect of parental divorce on conduct problems is only significant for children that experienced extreme levels of parental relationship quality. Among children whose parents reported the highest relationship quality (q 1 ), the PO mean in stable family is 0.960, with parental divorce increasing it by 0.349. In other words, children with parental divorce experiencing good relationship quality show more conduct problems than children in stable family. The difference in percentage is lower among children whose parents had a very poor relationship quality (q 4 ).

For hyperactivity problems, the effect of parental divorce is significant only for those whose parents had a very poor relationship. Children with parental divorce experiencing very poor relationships among parents, have a higher probability of reporting hyperactivity problems compared to children with a stable family; the difference in percentage is around 11%.

As it can be seen, for internalizing problems the average effect of parental divorce is not significant once parental relationship quality is considered. However, when this effect is analyzed according to the quartiles of parental relationship quality, we get similar results to those obtained for conduct problems. The effect of parental divorce is significant in the extreme level of the relationship quality: within the group of children whose parents showed very good relationships, those who experience parental divorce have a higher probability of manifesting internalizing problems compared to children from stable family; the difference in percentage is around 20% Footnote 4 . Within the group of children whose parents had very poor relationships, the difference in percentage is lower, at around 12%. For peer problems, the effect of parental divorce is only significant for children whose parents had a good relationship (q 2 ) and, for pro-social behavior, the effect is only significant for those with bad relationships (q 3 ).

With regard to the cognitive dimension of children’s school readiness, although the average effect of parental divorce on the picture similarity tests is not significant Table 4 , the results are different in Table 5 . The effect of parental divorce is significant and equal to − 1.326 among children with parents reporting very poor relationships (q 4 ). The effect for those experiencing very good relationships (q 1 ) among parents is not significant. For the vocabulary test, it is interesting to note that the estimated ATE is significant and negatively large for those children exposed to a very good relationship (q 1 ) among parents. In this category, parental divorce decreases the score of the vocabulary test by an average of 3.319 points. It is also significant but lower in magnitude for those whose parents had a bad relationship (q 3 ). For the pattern construction test the estimated ATE is significant and negative for children experiencing poor and very poor relationships.

5 Discussion

This work is an attempt to elucidate the interrelationships between family disruption and parental relationship quality by testing the following three main hypotheses: i ) parental relationship quality and family disruption are unrelated processes that have independent effects on children (the independent hypothesis); ii ) the apparent effect of family disruption is explained according to the parental relationship quality (the selection hypothesis); iii ) the effect of family disruption on children depends on the quality of the parental relationship (the heterogeneity hypothesis).

We advance previous research in several ways. First, we evaluate the importance of these hypotheses using a comprehensive view of child development rather than focusing on a single outcome. We analyze multiple domains of children’s school readiness: cognitive and psychological well-being. Second, we focus on very young children who are at a key point in their development, namely the transition to school, while most research focuses on children in middle childhood or older. Third, we also analyze parental temporary separation which is a type of family disruption that is only scarcely covered in previous literature. Fourth, unlike most previous research, our study examines the heterogeneity of divorce effects by parental relationship quality outside of the US by using a UK nationally representative sample. Fifth, we use a proper multivariate method to impute the missing values and we employ the augmented inverse propensity treatment weighted estimator to infer the causal effects in each imputed dataset and we combine the results. Up to our knowledge this estimator has not been used by previous studies to assess the effect of parental divorce on children well-being.

We find mixed support for the i ) independent and the ii ) selection hypotheses, obtaining a different pattern for each outcome and type of family disruption. The selection hypothesis is supported by the potential outcome models regarding the average effect of parental divorce on pro-social behavior, internalizing and peer problems. Nevertheless, there is evidence in favor of the independent hypothesis in five of the eight outcomes.

Parental temporary separation only has a significant effect on conduct and hyperactivity problems; however, the magnitude of the effect of this type of family disruption is greater than the magnitude of the effect of divorce. These results indicate that, although children experiencing parental temporary separation have been invisible in most previous research and family policies, they are also at risk, and more research on this type of family disruption is needed (Nepomnyaschy and Teitler 2013 ; Halpern-Meekin and Turney 2016 ).

With regard to the third hypothesis related to the heterogeneity of divorce effects, this study shows that the average independent effects mask the substantial variation of the effect of parental divorce. First, we find that a non-negligible proportion of children from divorced families did not experience parental relationship problems. For this group of children, the idea that the negative effects of parental divorce are explained by parental relationship quality is not valid. In addition, our findings clearly support the hypothesis that the dissolution of high-quality parental unions has the most harmful effects on children’s lives. We find that among children whose parents had a very good relationship quality, there are substantial differences between those whose parents divorce and those that remain together in six of the eight analyzed dimensions. In four outcomes, the effect of parental divorce is greater for them with respect to the others.

Our findings for children of non-distressed families are in accordance with the existing literature on the heterogeneity of divorce effects based on children in middle childhood, adolescence or adulthood using US and Canadian data. However, it is important to point out that our results based on children at age 5 clearly diverge from those obtained by Fomby and Osborne ( 2010 ) with children at age 3, which find that parental divorce is not harmful for children in high- and low-conflict families. This discrepancy is probably due to the fact that these authors categorize three-quarters of the unions as high-quality, while we consider of very good quality only those unions above the 75th percentile (highest relationship quality) of the sample distribution. This result is consistent with research on the heterogeneity of divorce effects in adults which shows that divorce has the most harmful emotional effects among those who had satisfactory relationships prior to separation. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the children of these parents, especially the very young, are also affected more strongly.

We do not find any evidence that corroborates the hypothesis that the effect of parental divorce is positive for children who experienced poor parental relationship quality (see also Booth and Amato 2001 ; Hanson 1999 ). It is also important to acknowledge that we do not expect to obtain this finding in a country such as the UK where fewer children are living in poor families compared to the US (OECD 2017 ). Comparative research on the heterogeneity of the effects of parental divorce is needed in order to determine to what extent this hypothesis varies by country and the mechanisms that may explain this variation such as the generosity of family policies.

In addition to that, we explain why we find a divergence between our result and the one obtained by previous studies. First, as mentioned, these studies have used a continuous measure of parental relationship quality and they consider the interaction effect between parental divorce and parental relationship quality instead we evaluate to what extent the effect of divorce differs between very good, good, poor and very poor relationship quality. This allow us to detect a non-linear pattern in some of our outcomes: children whose parental relationship lay in the extremes (very good or very poor) are those most affected by divorce while children whose parental relationship was moderately good or bad are the least affected. Making a comparison with adult data, our results are in line with the findings of Williams ( 2003 ). Second, the proposed model specification based on the augmented inverse probability weighted estimator which requires to specify a potential outcome model along with the propensity score model, has never been proposed in this context. Third, most previous research has focused on parental conflict measured in terms of the frequency of disagreements, rather than on a measure of overall marital discord and quality, the millennium cohort study does not, however, provide a direct measure of the disagreement among parents. Also, our measure of parental relationship quality is derived from the mother’s perceptions and therefore misses the father perceptions. Due to these limitations, we are not able to capture the overall level of relationship quality that children experience at home. For this reason, we cannot rule out the possibility that if we had better measures to assess disharmonious families, we may have found positive effects of parental divorce for children living in them. Future research may be improved by using more subtle measurements of relationship quality and focusing on the heterogeneity effects of divorce on very young children.

Another reason that could explain why parental separation is not beneficial for children who experienced poor parental relationship quality is that we are not able to capture its duration. Research shows that there are different trajectories of parental relationship quality over time and that experiencing persistent poor parental relationship quality has more negative effects on children’s well-being than experiencing temporary poor parental relationship quality. Hence, it is reasonable to hypothesize that parental separation can be positive for children whose parents experienced a chronically poor parental relationship quality while the same event can be damaging for children that only experienced temporary poor parental relationship quality prior to separation. An important contribution of future research would be to include the measurement of the duration and trajectories of parental relationship quality in the studies of the heterogeneity effects of parental divorce. In addition to that, future studies should not only analyze the heterogeneity effects of parental divorce but also the heterogeneity effects of other forms of family transitions such as parental temporary separation. Children experience an increase in the number and types of family dissolution experiences during childhood: parents separate and then they may get back together or have a new partner and may separate again (Amato 2010 ).

Overall, the present study makes two main contributions to the literature by employing a suitable model to infer causality by reporting that parental temporary separation has detrimental effects for children, and that parental divorce exerts the most harmful effects among children whose parents enjoyed a very good parental relationship quality prior to separation. Our results can be used also to define policies targeted to those children for whom the detrimental effect of divorce might be stronger.

We are only able to empirically study the heterogeneous effects of parental divorce and not the heterogeneous effects of parental temporary separation due to data limitations. For this reason, we only theoretically discuss the heterogeneous effects of parental temporary separation in this section. In addition to that, the literature does not provide any theoretical explanation about the heterogeneity of the effects of parental temporary separation.

Details on the survey, its origins, objectives, and sampling, as well as the content of the survey waves, are contained in the documentation attached to the data deposited at the UK Data Archive at Essex University.

These percentages are calculated by considering the estimated ATE multiplied by 100 and divided by the estimated PO referred to stable family.

The percentages are computed as explained in the previous footnote.

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Acknowledgements

Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. Garriga thanks the grants of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Grants CSO2012-33476 and CSO2015-69439-R). Pennoni thanks the grant “Finite mixture and latent variable models for causal inference and analysis of socio-economic data” (FIRB—Futuro in Ricerca) funded by the Italian Government (RBFR12SHVV). The authors thank Isabella Romeo for her contribution to preliminary data analyses.

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Garriga, A., Pennoni, F. The Causal Effects of Parental Divorce and Parental Temporary Separation on Children’s Cognitive Abilities and Psychological Well-being According to Parental Relationship Quality. Soc Indic Res 161 , 963–987 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02428-2

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More couples are divorcing after age 50 than ever before. Psychologists are helping them navigate the big changes

Practitioners working with later-in-life divorcees can help patients explore eroded connections with family, friends, and their sense of belonging

Vol. 54 No. 8 Print version: page 58

Divorce and Child Custody
Marriage and Relationships

drawing of a man looking at a laptop with a broken heart image on the wall

Divorce poses a daunting schism at any age, as one of life’s most profound stressors. But for adults who split from their partners later in life, the emotional and practical complexities can further stack up, mirroring their life experience.

While divorce has declined among adults in their 20s and 30s , the rate among adults age 50 and older has surged upward, doubling between 1990 and 2010 before leveling off more recently. Divorce is still more common among younger people, with roughly two-thirds occurring among the under-50 crowd, but the change is nevertheless significant. In 1990, 8.7% of all divorces in the United States occurred among adults 50 and older. By 2019, that percentage had grown to 36% ( Brown, S. L., & Lin, I., Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences , Vol. 77, No. 9, 2022 ).

The logistics and stakes involved can present unique challenges, according to researchers and psychologists. Adults who separate finances later in life may have more assets involved. If they married when they were young, their mutual social ties may stretch back decades to their religious community, volunteer organizations, and neighborhood friends. Their children—whether youths, teenagers, or adults themselves—will be emotionally impacted in differing ways.

“Getting a divorce is never easy, but it’s going to look a little different in your 50s when you’ve potentially been with someone for a long time,” said Kelly Cichy, PhD, a professor of human development and family science at Kent State University in Ohio. “In some cases, adult children are out of the house; they are more autonomous. But that doesn’t mean that there might not still be very real consequences and renegotiating of relationships or a need for additional support.”

Divorce also can be financially depleting. Women 50 and older experience a 45% decline in their standard of living; for men it’s 21% ( Lin, I., & Brown, S. L., Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences , Vol. 76, No. 10, 2021 ). Other research, based on interviews with 66 adults who divorced at 50 or older, found that worries about finances and loneliness were the two most pressing concerns expressed. But the adults described positive aspects as well, including an improvement in overall happiness, liberation from their ex-spouses, and a sense of enhanced independence and freedom ( Crowley, J. E., Journal of Family Issues , Vol. 40, No. 11, 2019 ).

Amid this pivotal life transition, psychologists can help their patients foster and maintain the emotional resiliency that middle-age and older adults are more likely to have accrued through a lifetime of weathering prior difficult experiences. They can provide therapeutic support as they navigate related losses, both emotional and literal. Such losses may include grief over the death of a long-planned future with a spouse, as well as the more tangible loss of connections with others, such as extended family and mutual friends.

Psychologists can also work with patients who are contemplating divorce to think through the extent to which their frustrations with a partner are intertwined with broader identity-related challenges that can emerge later in life, said Rowena Gomez, PhD, department chair and a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University. They may have recently retired and lost their job-related identity, she said. They may still have the pressures of younger children or their children may have moved out, altering their sense of being a parent.

“That’s why it’s important for them to figure out who they are and if they can be who they want to be with or without the divorce,” Gomez said. “Sometimes the grass is not always greener if the real issue is with themselves. And hopefully that’s what psychotherapy, if they are going, can help them think through.”

Later-life divorce predictors

To some extent, the trends in later-life divorce reflect more modern trends, Cichy said. Women are more likely now to have careers and related economic autonomy. Over time, society has placed greater expectations on marital quality, leaving partners more reluctant to settle for what some have described as “empty shell” marriages, particularly after the children leave home, she said. Increased life expectancy may be a possibility, with potentially decades of relatively good health ahead.

“What does that mean for staying in a conflicted or difficult marriage?” Cichy asked. “If you stay married, you are going to continue to have those stressors for more years and maybe additional stressors that come with just normal aging,” she said, such as caregiving, frail health, or managing relationships with adult children.

Some of the reasons for the increase in over-50 divorces include societal trends: More men and women expect marriage to be a partnership of equals, women are more likely to have careers and related economic autonomy, and lowered stigma about divorce reduces social pressure to settle for “empty shell” marriages.

But while these life changes can be influential, demographic research has identified broad similarities for why marriages break down regardless of age, Cichy said. For instance, people who have been divorced once are more likely to divorce again, she said.

One analysis scrutinized whether three common turning points after 50—an empty nest, retirement, or poor health—boosted a couple’s likelihood of divorcing ( Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences , Vol. 73, No. 6, 2018 ). “Those factors remain relevant but they’re not as critical or central as we had initially anticipated,” said Susan L. Brown, PhD, one of the authors, who has conducted extensive demographic research involving gray divorce.

Other factors play a greater role, such as economic stability, said Brown, a professor of sociology and codirector of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Couples who don’t carry debt and own a home are less likely to separate ( Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences , Vol. 73, No. 6, 2018 ).

Brown has become increasingly convinced that trends in later-life divorce are largely driven by the baby boomer generation, who spawned the initial divorce wave in the 1970s. “Many of them went on to remarry,” Brown said, noting that some are on their second or third marriages, which boosts the likelihood of divorce.

This baby boomer influence, according to Brown, explains why rates of divorce among people ages 50 to 64 have largely stagnated since 2010 after a steep rise beginning in 1990. Divorce rates among adults 65 and older have continued to increase through 2019 as more baby boomers move into that age group ( Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences , Vol. 77, No. 9, 2022 ). “To me it’s just really striking that 1 in 10 people getting divorced is 65 or older,” Brown said.

For adults who initiate divorce and are in relatively good shape in terms of their health and finances, that move can be “a relatively benign event,” Brown said. “But for other people getting divorced in their 50s, 60s, or beyond, if they are precarious from an economic standpoint, if they are having health issues, or if they didn’t want to get divorced, it can be challenging and difficult. Longer term, we have to consider—what does divorce mean for the experience of aging?” she said, pointing out that Social Security and other benefits are tied to marital status.

Jeff (who requested only his first name be used) recalls a profound sense of loss when he realized several years ago that his marriage of 30-plus years was ending. Gone was the potential for a lifelong love and the opportunity to share with his wife the next stages of parenthood, their adult children’s accomplishments, perhaps even grandchildren one day, the 60-year-old said.

He also struggled with feelings of failure, believing that his broken marriage layered on top of prior failures, such as an earlier decision to give up his pursuit of a professional career as a musician and switch to information technology. At Jeff’s worst, during a pandemic video call with friends in 2020, he acknowledged that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts.

[ Related: Talking through practicalities of divorce later in life ]

His friends helped Jeff get an appointment with a local therapist. Those meetings, he said, have enabled him to work through his feelings of failure, including those related to the divorce. The therapist also encouraged him to remain open to new possibilities, including possibly a romantic partner—not an easy step to take on the cusp of his sixth decade.

“When I was in my 20s or 30s, there was a whole lifetime ahead; there were people looking for partners,” he said. “It felt like, boy, here I am coming up on 60. Am I going to be alone the rest of my life? I don’t want to be alone. I’m not an alone person. I’m a people person. That was a real concern.”

Working through ripple effects

Social science researchers have compiled a multifaceted picture of the trends that underpin later-life divorce, said Karen Fingerman, PhD, director of the Texas Aging and Longevity Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. But it’s the psychologist’s role to assist these adults on an individual level as they process this life detour so they can recover and move forward, she said. “How do you help an older adult understand what’s happening, what their role was, and what their next step is? How do you do that when something this big has disrupted your life story?”

A common fear is loneliness, given the many years that adults in the second half of life have already committed to various relationships, Fingerman said. One study that she was involved with looked at how much contact adults 65 and older have with social and familial connections and found that only 11% of those relationships had started within the prior decade ( The Gerontologist, 2023 ).

“You will lose in-laws, you will lose some of your friends,” Fingerman said. “And when you do, there’s no replacement. It’s not like when you’re in your 20s and everybody is still making friends, and your oldest friends you met 5 years ago.”

One advantage adults over 50 have is a better perspective, which helps when life throws curveballs their way, said Susan T. Charles, PhD, a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, who developed the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration ( Psychological Bulletin , Vol. 136, No. 6, 2010 ). They are more likely to have suffered prior crises than their younger counterparts and can tap into the emotional and behavioral tools that they previously relied upon, Charles said. “The older you get, the more you’ve experienced life (in its good and its bad), the more you can put things into perspective.”

Moreover, as people age, they have a heightened awareness that they have fewer years before them, Charles said. “Which makes them focus more on the here and now, the right now, as opposed to the future,” which can ease worrying and bolster emotional resilience, she said.

A traumatic event such as a divorce will surely cause a notable uptick in emotional distress, Charles said. But there’s some evidence that older adults, amid the emotional tumult of a divorce, may be able to better handle the smaller daily stressors that arise in its wake, such as the strain of assuming tasks previously handled by the ex-spouse. She cited a recent study in which younger adults and older adults were given a cognitively difficult anagram task, and their emotional responses were subsequently assessed. While both groups were negatively impacted by the cognitive stressor, the recovery of the older adults surpassed that of the younger adults ( Minton, A. R., et al., Psychology and Aging , Vol. 38, No. 6, 2023 ).

As psychologists work with these adults, they should strive to unpack to what extent a marital separation has eroded the patient’s connections with others as well as, generally, their sense of belonging to a broader community, Charles said. Given the vital importance of connections to emotional health, psychologists can help patients think through ways to build new social bonds, whether that’s joining a bowling league or volunteering for a political organization, she said.

Divorce may stress parental ties with their adult children as well, even if they’re not surprised by the separation, said Carol Hughes, PhD, a Laguna Hills, California, psychotherapist and coauthor of Home Will Never Be the Same Again: A Guide for Adult Children of Gray Divorce. In some cases, divorce can shatter an adult child’s sense of their own backstory, Hughes said. For example, adult children of later-life divorce often say, “We seemed like a happy family. How long ago were they not happy? Was my whole childhood smoke and mirrors, like a facade at Disneyland?”

Amid the grief surrounding a divorce, therapists should remain aware that not everyone in the family is necessarily on the same timeline, Hughes said. One parent may have quickly moved on, including finding a new partner, and wants the children—whether they’ve left home or are still living with one of their parents—to embrace their newfound happiness, she said.

“And so sometimes if the parent is happy and the child isn’t, then the child feels guilty,” Hughes said. Psychologists can work with the child, validating that it’s OK to be on a different timeline, she said. “And that grieving takes time, just like healing takes time, and grieving is part of healing.”

For children in their teens or even younger, divorce can hit at a key developmental time, when they are still forming their identity as an individual and as part of a larger family, Hughes said. In situations when the children are already adults, often just launching into their own lives, they may fret about their parents’ mental health, and especially if one of the parents didn’t want the separation, Hughes said. “It’s like a role reversal,” she said. “They feel like they should help their parents. But they don’t have the tools and skills to do so.”

Another major complication is inheritance rights and next-of-kin relationships for medical decision-making in the wake of a later-life divorce (see sidebar page 63). Within the first decade, 37% of men either remarry or cohabit with a new partner, as well as 22% of women ( Brown, S. L., et al., Demography , Vol. 56, No. 2, 2019 ). Other adults keep the romance but maintain separate residences, a phenomenon dubbed living apart together, according to Deborah Carr, PhD, a sociology professor at Boston University who coauthored a review article looking at later-life families ( Journal of Marriage and Family , Vol. 82, No. 1, 2020 ). “You essentially go steady, but you have your separate home,” she said.

Jeff describes a good relationship with his adult children, as well as amiable communication with his ex-wife. The divorce also led to some changes in his daily life, such as achieving a long-desired dream to move to a rural area, purchasing property with a pond that’s richly populated by birds. He gave up on online dating and subsequently met “a wonderful woman” introduced to him by a mutual friend.

And he continues to seek counseling. “This therapist has been really a staunch and encouraging support, just an extremely positive influence, helping me get through some of the past issues,” he said.

Living through a divorce after 50 can force individuals to revisit and knit back together their own life story, something they can hopefully achieve with the support of the therapeutic process, Fingerman said.

“You’re at a stage of your life where you’re reflecting more on your life and where it’s gone, and where it’s taken you,” she said. “How do you understand your life in a way that gives you that sense of integrity when something fell apart that was such a fundamental part of that life?”

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Reasons for Divorce and Recollections of Premarital Intervention: Implications for Improving Relationship Education

Shelby b. scott.

Department of Psychology, University of Denver

Galena K. Rhoades

Scott m. stanley, elizabeth s. allen.

Department of Psychology, University of Colorado – Denver

Howard J. Markman

The study presents findings from interviews of 52 divorced individuals who received the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) while engaged to be married. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the study sought to understand participant reasons for divorce (including identification of the “final straw”) in order to understand if the program covered these topics effectively. Participants also provided suggestions based on their premarital education experiences so as to improve future relationship education efforts. The most commonly reported major contributors to divorce were lack of commitment, infidelity, and conflict/arguing. The most common “final straw” reasons were infidelity, domestic violence, and substance use. More participants blamed their partners than blamed themselves for the divorce. Recommendations from participants for the improvement of premarital education included receiving relationship education before making a commitment to marry (when it would be easier to break-up), having support for implementing skills outside of the educational setting, and increasing content about the stages of typical marital development. These results provide new insights into the timing and content of premarital and relationship education.

Divorced individuals, compared to their married counterparts, have higher levels of psychological distress, substance abuse, and depression, as well as lower levels of overall health ( Amato, 2000 ; Hughes & Waite, 2009 ). Marital conflict and divorce have also shown to be associated with negative child outcomes including lower academic success ( Frisco, Muller, & Frank, 2007 ; Sun & Li, 2001 ), poorer psychological well-being (Sun & Li, 2002), and increased depression and anxiety ( Strohschein, 2005 ). Given these negative outcomes of marital conflict and divorce, the overarching goal of premarital relationship education has been to provide couples with skills to have healthy marriages.

The Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP; Markman, Stanley, & Blumberg, 2010 ) focuses on teaching appropriate communication and conflict skills, and provides information to help couples evaluate expectations, understand relationship commitment, and enhance positive connections through friendship and fun ( Ragan, Einhorn, Rhoades, Markman, & Stanley, 2009 ). Most research indicates that compared to control groups, PREP helps couples learn to communicate more positively and less negatively (e.g., Laurenceau, Stanley, Olmos-Gallo, Baucom, & Markman, 2004 ; Markman, Renick, Floyd, Stanley, & Clements, 1993 ), increases satisfaction, and reduces risk for divorce in the years following the program (e.g., Hahlweg, Markman, Thurmaier, Engl, & Eckert, 1998 ; Hahlweg & Richter, 2010 ; Markman & Hahlweg, 1993 ; Stanley, Allen, Markman, Rhoades, & Prentice, 2010 ). A few studies have shown more mixed or moderated results (e.g., Baucom, Hahlweg, Atkins, Engl, & Thurmaier, 2006 ; van Widenfelt, Hosman, Schaap, & van der Staak, 1996 ; Markman, Rhoades, Stanley, & Peterson, in press ). In an evidence-based tradition, the growing knowledge base can and should be used to generate insights about how to refine future efforts ( Stanley & Markman, 1998 ). One methodology that could improve PREP is to interview divorced individuals who participated in the program about their reasons for divorce and premarital education experiences in order to understand if the program covered these topics effectively.

Few studies have directly examined retrospective reports of reasons for divorce, particularly within the past two decades (see Bloom, Niles, & Tatcher, 1985 ; Gigy & Kelly, 1992 ; Kitson & Holmes, 1992 ; Thurnher, Fenn, Melichar, & Chiriboga, 1983 ) and no study, to our knowledge, has examined reasons for divorce in a sample of individuals who participated in the same relationship education program. Within a sample of divorcing parents, Hawkins, Willoughby, and Doherty (2012) found that the most endorsed reasons for divorce from a list of possible choices were growing apart (55%), not being able to talk together (53%), and how one’s spouse handled money (40%). Amato and Previti (2003) found that when divorced individuals were asked open-endedly to provide their reasons for divorce, the most cited reasons were infidelity (21.6%), incompatibility (19.2%), and drinking or drug use (10.6%). A statewide survey in Oklahoma found that the most commonly checked reasons for divorce from a list of choices were lack of commitment (85%), too much conflict or arguing (61%), and/or infidelity or extramarital affairs (58%; C. A. Johnson et al., 2001 ). International studies have found highly endorsed reasons for divorce to be marrying too young, communication problems, incompatibility, spousal abuse, drug and alcohol use, religious differences, failures to get along, lack of love, lack of commitment, and childlessness, to name a few ( Al Gharaibeh & Bromfield, 2012 ; Savaya & Cohen, 2003a , 2003b ; Mbosowo, 1994 ).

In sum, across studies some consistency exists regarding the importance of issues such as communication, incompatibility, and commitment as reasons for divorce, while other issues seem to vary across samples. Thus, it would be helpful to understand the reasons for divorce in former PREP participants in order to highlight specific areas that the program could have addressed better and in order to improve that program’s effectiveness. In addition, no study, to our knowledge, has asked divorced participants who all participated in the same premarital program to provide suggestions for improving relationship education programs based on their own experiences in the program and considering that their marriages ended in divorce. These results could be valuable for practitioners to consider in order to improve the PREP model specifically and relationship education efforts more generally. The current study qualitatively interviewed individuals who had completed PREP and later divorced about their premarital education, including what they wished would have been covered, as well as their marital experiences, particularly regarding their reasons for divorce. Therefore, this study sought to understand both participants’ reasons for divorce as well as how they thought relationship education could have better addressed their needs. The ultimate goal of the current study was to provide new knowledge on potential ways to help relationship education best prevent marital distress and divorce.

Participants

Data were collected from 52 individuals who received PREP premaritally but subsequently divorced at some point in the following 14 years. These individuals were all initially participants of a larger study of the effectiveness of premarital education ( N = 306 couples; Markman et al., 2004 ; Stanley et al., 2001 ). All participants in the current study either received PREP through the religious organization ( n = 24) that performed their weddings or PREP through a university ( n = 28). The sample included 31 women and 21 men. Of these, 18 men and 18 women had been married to each other (we were unable to assess the former spouse of the other 16 individuals). At the first time point of the larger study (i.e., the premarital assessment), these participants were 25.4 years old on average ( SD = 6.67), with a median education of 14 years, and median income of $20,000–29,999. At the time of the post-divorce interview, the average age was 37.2 ( SD = 6.5), the median education level was 16 years, and 32 of the participants (61.5%) had a least one child. The average number of years since premarital intervention to the post-divorce interview was 12.2 years, and the average number of years from finalized divorce to participating in the interview was 5.2 years. The sample was 88.2% Caucasian, 5.9% Native American, 3.9% Black, and 2.0% Asian; 1 participant did not report race. In terms of ethnicity, 84.3% of the sample identified as Non-Hispanic and 15.7% as Hispanic.

Couples ( N = 306) were recruited for the larger study through the religious organizations that would later perform their wedding services. At the initial wave of the study in 1996, participants were required to be planning marriage with someone of the opposite sex and needed to participate as a couple. As mentioned earlier, they were assigned to either receive PREP through the religious organization, PREP at a university, or naturally-occurring services. Throughout the duration of the larger study, participants were asked to complete annual assessments that included questionnaires and videotaped discussions. If a participant expressed that he/she was divorced or currently divorcing throughout the larger study, this information was recorded. From 2010–2012, we attempted to contact all divorced participants ( n = 114 individuals) to ask if they would participate in the current study. Of these individuals, we were unable to contact 35 participants, 18 declined an invitation to participate, and 1 participant was deceased. Participants who divorced and had received naturally-occurring services ( n = 8) were excluded from these analyses because we could not know exactly what premarital services they had received. There were no significant differences between divorced individuals who participated in this study compared to divorced individuals who did not participate across age at marriage, ethnicity, personal income, or relationship adjustment at the premarital assessment ( p s > .05).

All participants completed an individual 30-minute audio-recorded interview over the phone about their divorce and their recollections of their premarital intervention. They received $50 for participating in this interview. All interviews were transcribed verbatim for analyses. All study procedures were approved by a university Institutional Review Board.

Reasons for divorce

Using items from a previous survey on reasons for divorce ( C. A. Johnson et al., 2001 ) participants were asked to indicate whether or not each item on a list of common problems in relationships was a “major contributor to their divorce” (“yes” or “no”). These items included lack of commitment, infidelity/extra-marital affairs, too much arguing or conflict, substance abuse, domestic violence, economic hardship, lack of support from family members, marrying too young, little or no premarital education, and religious differences.

Qualitative feedback on progression of divorce

If participants indicated any of the reasons for divorce, they were subsequently asked to elaborate on how this problem progressed to their eventual divorce by the questions “Considering the problems you were telling me such as [the major reasons for divorce the participant listed], how did they move from problems to actually getting a divorce?” and “You said that [cited reason] was major contributor to the divorce. Can you tell me more about that?” We will only present detailed results from this qualitative feedback on reasons for divorce that were endorsed by at least 20% of participants.

Final straw

Participants were also asked if there was a “final straw” to their relationship ending, and to expand on that reason if there was one.

Who should have worked harder?

Participants were asked two questions ( C. A. Johnson et al., 2001 ): “Again looking back at your divorce, do you ever wish that you, yourself, had worked harder to save your marriage?” (with response options of “Yes, I wish I had worked harder” or “No, I worked hard enough.”) and “Do you ever wish that your spouse had worked harder to save your marriage?” (with response options of “Yes, I wish my spouse had worked harder.” or “No, my spouse worked hard enough.”)

Qualitative feedback on PREP

Participants were asked to report and elaborate on what they remembered, found difficult, or wished was different about their premarital education experience in an open-ended format. Example questions from the interviews include “What do you remember about the premarital preparation or training you and your ex-spouse took part in?” and “Based on your experience in a marriage that didn’t work out as you planned, do you think there is any kind of information or education that would have made a difference in how things turned out?”

Analytic Approach

Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were utilized to address our research questions. For the first phase of analysis, answers were counted for close-ended questions, such as the list of major reasons for divorce (see Table 1 ) and if there was a “final straw” (yes or no). For open-ended questions, we followed a grounded-theory methodology ( Creswell, 2006 ; Strauss & Corbin, 1998 ). For the first phase of coding, after repeated readings of the transcripts, two coders, including the first author and a research assistant from the larger project, followed a grounded-theory methodology to generate common themes related to participants’ recollections of their premarital education and reasons for divorce (from open-ended items; Creswell, 2006 ; Strauss & Corbin, 1998 ). The two coders then met repeatedly to compare results and to establish consistency. If the coders disagreed across codes, they discussed their codes with the second author to come to a conclusion. Next, axial coding was used to analyze how different codes vary in order to create specific categories of the individual codes ( Creswell, 2006 ; Strauss & Corbin, 1998 ). For example, axial coding involved examining how respondent reports of general themes (e.g., communication problems) varied in their presentation (e.g., communication problems throughout the relationship vs. communication problems only at the end of marriage).

List of Major Reasons for Divorce by Individuals and Couples Who Participated in PREP

Reason for divorce	Individuals (N =52)	Couples ( N = 36)	Couple Agreement
Lack of commitment	75.0	94.4	70.6
Infidelity or extramarital affairs	59.6	88.8	31.3
Too much conflict and arguing	57.7	72.2	53.8
Getting married too young	45.1	61.1	27.3
Financial problems	36.7	55.6	50.0
Substance abuse	34.6	50.0	33.3
Domestic violence	23.5	27.8	40.0
Health problems	18.2	27.8	25.0
Lack of support from family	17.3	27.8	20.0
Religious differences	13.3	33.3	0.0
Little or no premarital education	13.3	22.2	25.0

Note. The individuals column reflects the percentage of individuals in the total sample who said yes to each reason. The couples column reflects the percentage of couples who had at least one partner say yes to each reason. The couple agreement column represents how many couples had both partners cite each reason out of the couples that had a least one partner mention that reason.

The final stage of coding included selective coding in which categories were refined and relationships between concepts were noted, such as how reasons for divorce related to difficulties utilizing PREP skills. Once all codes were determined, the first author and a new coder, another research assistant on the project, coded all transcripts with the established coding system. Codes were counted for all individuals, as well as couples as a whole (partner agreement on the same code) and couples in which only one partner from the relationship reported a specific code (partner disagreement on the same code). The average Cohen’s Kappa (per code) was .71 ( SD = .28) and the median was .80.

Analyses are presented at the individual level by using data from all 52 participants, as well as at the couple level by using data from the 18 couples ( n = 36) in which both partners completed interviews.

Reasons for Divorce

Table 1 presents the “major contributors for divorce” list. Overall, the results indicate that the most often cited reasons for divorce at the individual level were lack of commitment (75.0%), infidelity (59.6%), and too much conflict and arguing (57.7%), followed by marrying too young (45.1%), financial problems (36.7%), substance abuse (34.6%), and domestic violence (23.5%). Other problems, such as religious differences, were endorsed less than 20% of the time. The order of these rankings was essentially identical at the couple level, although rates of endorsement increased because both partners were reporting. The following provides qualitative elaborations by participants on these specific reasons for divorce.

Results indicated that the most common major contributing factor to divorce reported by participants was lack of commitment , reported by 75% of individuals and by at least one person in 94.4% of couples. Of the couples in which at least one partner mentioned commitment as a problem, 70.6% represented couples in which both partners agreed that lack of commitment was a major reason for divorce. Some participants reported that commitment within their relationships gradually eroded until there was not enough commitment to sustain the relationship, while others reported more drastic drops in commitment in response to negative events, such as infidelity.

“I realized it was the lack of commitment on my part because I didn’t really feel romantic towards him. I always had felt more still like he was a friend to me.” “It became insurmountable. It got to a point where it seemed like he was no longer really willing to work [on the relationship]. All of the stresses together and then what seemed to me to be an unwillingness to work through it any longer was the last straw for me.”

The next most often cited major contributing factor to divorce was infidelity , endorsed by 59.6% of individuals and by at least one partner in 88.8% of couples. Of those couples who had a least one partner report infidelity as a reason for divorce, only 31.3% represented couples in which both partners agreed that infidelity was a major contributor to the dissolution of their marriage. Thus, the majority of couples with apparent infidelity in their relationships only had one partner mention it as a contributing factor to their divorce. Overall, infidelity was often cited as a critical turning point in a deteriorating relationship.

“It was the final straw when he actually admitted to cheating on me. I kind of had a feeling about it, but, you know, I guess we all deny [because] we never think that the person you are married to or care about would do that to us.” “He cheated on me […] Then I met somebody else and did the same thing. […] And when he found out about it we both essentially agreed that it wasn’t worth trying to make it work anymore because it just hurt too bad.”

Conflict and arguing

Too much conflict and arguing was endorsed by 57.7% of individuals and 72.2% of couples had at least one partner report that was a major contributor to divorce. Of these couples, 53.8% of couples agreed that too much conflict and arguing was a contributor to divorce. Overall, participants indicated that conflicts were not generally resolved calmly or effectively. Respondents also reported that such communication problems increased in frequency and intensity throughout their marriages, which at times, seemed to coincide with lost feelings of positive connections and mutual support. By the end of the marriage, these respondents indicated that there was a significant lack of effective communication.

“I got frustrated of arguing too much.” “We’d have an argument over something really simple and it would turn into just huge, huge fights […] and so our arguments never got better they only ever got worse.”

Marrying too young

Getting married too young was reported as a major contributing factor to divorce by 45.1% of individuals and by at least one partner from 61.1% of couples. Both partners mentioned this reason in 27.3% of these couples. Participants who endorsed this item were an average of 23.3 years old at the time of marriage ( SD = 5.5) and participants who did not endorse this item were 29.2 ( SD = 6.7). In commenting about this issue, some participants reported that they had only known their partners for short periods of time before their marriage and/or that they wished they had dated their partners longer in order to either gain a better perspective on the relationship or to make a more rational decision as to whom they should marry. Additional comments about this issue included reports that participants were too young to make mature objective decisions regarding their marriage decisions.

“The main reason [we divorced] was because of our age. I think that being 19 at the time we got married, it just didn’t take. I think that we didn’t take anything as seriously as we should have.” “I wish that we wouldn’t have […] gotten married so young. I wish we would have waited a little bit longer before we actually got married.”

Financial problems

Financial problems were cited as a major contributor to divorce by 36.7% of participants and by at least one partner from 55.6% of couples. Of couples who had at least one partner endorse financial problems as a contributor to divorce, 50% represented couples in which both partners agreed that financial problems were a major reason for divorce. In elaborating about this issue, some participants indicated that financial difficulties were not the most pertinent reason for their divorce, but instead contributed to increased stress and tension within the relationship. Other participants also expressed that some financial difficulties were linked to other problems (e.g., health problems, substance abuse).

“I had a severe illness for almost a year and I was the only employed person [before that] so obviously money ran very short.” “The stress of trying to figure out the finances became a wedge that was really insurmountable.”

Substance abuse

Substance abuse was reported as a major contributing factor to divorce by 34.6% of participants, and by at least one partner in 50% of couples. Of these couples, only 33.3% of partners agreed that substance abuse was a major contributing factor to divorce. Thus, similar to reports of infidelity, the majority of couples who listed substance abuse as a reason for divorce had only one partner cite this reason. Generally, participants expressed that the severity of the substance abuse problem in their relationship was either minimized over the duration of the relationship, or if attempts to address the problem were made, the partner with the substance abuse problem would not improve and/or seek help. After several attempts to address the problem, the relationship finally ended.

“I said ‘absolutely no more bars’ and as soon as I found out he was back in them, I asked for [a divorce].” “He never admitted that he even drank. It wasn’t me against him. It was me against him and the disease.”

Domestic violence

Domestic violence was cited as a contributing factor to divorce by 23.5% of participants and by at least one partner from 27.8% of couples. Of those couples in which one partner listed domestic abuse a major contributor to divorce, 40.0% of partners agreed that it was a major contributor to divorce. Elaborations of this item included descriptions of both physical and emotional abuse. Participants often expressed how the abuse in their relationship developed gradually, with intensified cycles of abuse and contrition, until the severity of the abuse intensified to insurmountable levels.

“[There was] continuous sexual abuse and emotional trauma which only got worse over time.” “There were times that I felt very physically threatened. There was a time that there was a bit of shoving. I got an elbow to my nose and I got a nose bleed. Then there was another time that he literally just slid me along the floor. […]We’d work on it. It would happen again.”

Final Straw

After assessing participant major reasons for divorce, we were interested to see if participants indicated a single event or reason that constituted a “final straw” in the process of their marriage dissolution. Overall, 68.6% of participants and at least one partner in 88.9% of couples reported that there was a final straw leading to the end of their marriage. General themes of final straw issues where generated through qualitative methods for participants who reported a final straw. Of the individuals who indicated that there was a final straw involved in ending their marriages, the most common cited reason was infidelity, which was reported by 24% of these participants, followed by domestic violence (21.2%) and substance abuse (12.1%). At the couple level, no couples (0%) had both partners report the same reason for the final straw. Participants expressed that although these final straw events may not have been the first incident of their kind (e.g., the first time they realized their partner had a substance abuse problem) an event involving these behaviors led to the final decision for their relationship to end. Also, there were some situations in which individuals expressed that these three issues may have interacted with one another or other relationship issues.

“[My ex-husband] and I both had substance abuse problems which led to infidelity […] which also led to domestic violence”. “Along with him having alcohol and drug issues as well as infidelity issues [and] the stress, came the physical and verbal abuse.”

Who is to Blame?

Considering that infidelity, domestic violence, and substance abuse were the most often endorsed “final straw” reasons for divorce, we were interested in deciphering which member of the relationship participants saw as responsible for these behaviors. In examining participants’ elaborations of infidelity, substance abuse, and domestic violence, we found that 76.9%, 72.2%, and 77.8%, respectively, described these events in terms of their partner engaging in these negative behaviors, and only 11.5%, 11.1%, and 0%, respectively, volunteered that they engaged in the behavior themselves.

Furthermore, when participants were asked if their partner should have worked harder to save their marriages, 65.8% of men and 73.8% of women believe that their ex-spouse should have worked harder to save their marriages. Conversely, when participants were asked if they, personally, should have worked harder to save their marriages, only 31.6% of men and 33.3% of women expressed that they, personally, should have worked harder. Further, at the couple level, 70.6% of couples showed a pattern in which the women believed their ex-husbands should have worked harder to save their relationships while their ex-husbands did not believe they, themselves, should have worked harder. Only 11.7% agreed that the husband should have worked harder and 11.7% had the husband endorse that he should have worked harder with the wife disagreeing. Conversely, only 35.3% of couples displayed the pattern in which the men blamed their ex-wives for not working harder while their ex-wives, themselves, denied that they should have worked harder. Only 11.7% agreed that the wife should have worked harder and 17.7% had the wife endorsed that she should have worked harder with her husband disagreeing. Further, 35.3% of couples agreed that the wife had not needed to work harder to save the marriage, while only 5.9% of couples agreed that the husband had not needed to work harder. Thus, most participants believed their ex-partners should have worked harder, but at the couple level, there were more couples in which both partners agreed that the wife did not need to work harder than there were couples in which both partners agreed the husband did not need to work harder. When asked who filed for the divorce, 63.5% of participants indicated that the woman filed for divorce and only 25% participants indicated that the man filed for divorce.

Feedback on PREP

Next, we provide the findings on the most commonly cited qualitative feedback reported by participants regarding how to improve premarital education. The following results and percentages refer to counts of qualitative codes created by the research team based on common themes in the interviews.

Learning more about one’s partner

Results show that 42.3% of participants and 77.8% of couples expressed that they wished they had known more about their ex-spouse before they were married. Of these couples, 28.6% of partners agreed. These statements included desires to understand their partner better in order to improve their communication and better prepare for the marriage, or conversely, information that would have led them to never marry one’s partner in the first place. Indeed, 30.8% of participants specifically mentioned that they wished they had recognized “red flags” to leave the relationship before they entered their marriage.

“I think the only information that could have [helped] would’ve been information that might have led me to not marry him.” “I probably wish that we would have had more premarital counseling and had somebody tell us we should not be getting married.”

Participating in the program before constraints to marry

Twenty-five percent (25.0%) of participants specifically reported that they were influenced by constraints to stay in the relationship already in place during the program. Example constraints included having become engaged, set a wedding date, sent out invitations, or purchased a dress, which made it difficult for participants to objectively reconsider if they were marrying the right person through the educational experience. Thus, a large portion of participants expressed that receiving PREP just before marriage made it difficult for them to seriously considered delaying their wedding plans in order to make more objective decisions about the relationship.

“It was one of those things where you’re like, ‘Well, I already have the dress. We’re already getting married. We already have all the people. Everything is already set up and we bought the house.’ And you just kind of think, ‘Well you know I’m sure things will get better.’ You see the red flags but you kind of ignore them.” “I just didn’t have the guts to say, ‘You know what, I understand the dresses have been paid for. The churches have been booked. The invitations have gone out. But I don’t think I want to do this.’”

Improved support for ongoing implementation

Thirty-one percent (30.8%) of individuals and 38.9% of couples had at least one partner express that, although they found PREP skills helpful during the duration of the program, they had difficulty using these skills in their daily lives outside of their premarital education classes. Of these couples, 42.9% of partners agreed that they had difficulty implementing program skills in their marriage. In general, these participants expressed that, in the heat of the moment, it was hard to utilize their communication skills, such as staying calm, actively listening, working toward the problem as a team, or taking “time outs” as suggested in PREP. Other participants simply expressed that it was hard to remember and perfect their skills after the program ended because they did not practice them regularly.

“I think that the techniques […] were helpful. I just think it mattered if you were going to apply the principles or not. And I don’t think a lot of them were applied.” “It helped with discussion and listening tools. I think, it’s just the follow through, you know. We didn’t remember those things when it came down to it.” “He tried to use it at the beginning, but it was just the continual using of the techniques that were given to us.”

Education regarding the realities of marriage

In addition to not knowing enough about one’s partner, 48.1% of participants and 72.2% of couples expressed that they did not know enough about the realities or stages of marriage after participating in the program. Of these couples, 38.5% of partners agreed. These comments included surprise that their partners changed over the course of the marriage, as well as trouble facing new problems when they emerged (e.g., lack of attraction/connection, decreases in commitment and satisfaction, and new abuse problems).

“Premarital counseling teaches you how you get along, and that you should communicate, but it doesn’t really talk about the phases of a marriage over time.” “[I wish I had learned] that the biggest area in life in an ongoing relationship is knowing that things are going to come up that aren’t perfect. That after the wedding day, and the build up to the wedding day, real life is going to kick in and you have to really have some tools to deal with it.”

The goal of this study was to increase understanding of divorced individuals’ perspectives on whether their premarital education prepared them for marriage and how relationship education could be modified to better address couples’ needs. Thus, among individuals who received PREP premaritally and later divorced, this study addressed reasons for divorce as well as ideas for what else would have been helpful in relationship education. It is the first study to qualitatively assess divorced participants’ recommendations for relationship education services. Given the small sample and qualitative nature of the reports, the implications discussed below ought to be considered preliminary.

We asked about reasons for divorce to know whether PREP addressed the kinds of problems that couples who went on to divorce tended to experience. The most commonly cited reason for divorce was lack of commitment, followed by infidelity and too much conflict and arguing. These top rated major reasons for divorce noted here are similar to those found in large random surveys of divorced participants (cf. C. A. Johnson et al., 2001 ; Hawkins, Willoughby et al., 2012 ). Overall, these findings support the importance of covering communication and commitment in premarital education programs to help foster successful marriages; however, in light of participant feedback on PREP, the program may have been able to cover these and other topics more effectively.

Whereas issues like communication and commitment overlap with core content in PREP and other programs (see Markman & Rhoades, 2012 ), a substantial portion of responses suggested that, although the skills taught in PREP may been helpful, they did not implement them in real-life situations, particularly during heated discussions. Research indicates that commitment and conflict management are related in that commitment helps partners inhibit negative behaviors and engage in more positive behaviors at critical moments ( Slotter et al., 2012 ); thus, the issues of commitment and conflict management are likely intertwined in important ways. Further, consistent with other research on a German version of PREP ( Hahlweg & Richter, 2010 ), participants also reported that they forgot some of the communication skills over time.

These findings highlight a key question for the couple research field regarding how to enhance couples’ ability to use beneficial strategies when they are most needed. One solution could be to increase the time couples spend in premarital education in order for them to master essential skills and to help them become more likely to constructively derail negative processes as they emerge. At the same time, the version of PREP that these couples received was 12 hours long, which is both on the long end of what most couples receive in premarital education ( Mdn = 8 hours; Stanley, Amato, Johnson, & Markman, 2006 ) and in the range of what tends to be the most effective dose ( Hawkins, Stanley, Blanchard, & Albright, 2012 ). Longer curricula do not seem to lead to stronger effects ( Hawkins, Stanley et al., 2012 ), but future random-assignment studies could address this question better.

With most premarital education services, including PREP, couples are not provided opportunities to practice new skills or receive coaching while they are upset or experiencing a difficult disagreement. A group or workshop format likely inhibits such real-world discussions. It could be that couples would benefit from new program content that helps them practice their skills better when they are having trouble. Couples may also benefit from additional opportunities to perfect the use of program strategies after the intervention has ended, such as through booster classes or individual meetings with coaches. Research indicates that such boosters may be effective ( Braukhaus, Hahlweg, Kroeger, Groth, & Fehm-Wolfsdorf, 2003 ). New technologies now offer innovative ways to deliver such boosters, such as through online training or smart phone applications.

Content Considerations for Premarital Education

Introducing new content on the issues that participants identified as final straws in their marriages may also be beneficial. These issues were infidelity, aggression or emotional abuse, and substance use. Addressing these behaviors directly in relationship education raises some questions regarding which couples relationship education providers might seek to help stay together as opposed to help break-up. We believe premarital education should serve as a prevention effort to help healthy and happy couples stay that way and that keeping distressed, abusive, or otherwise unhealthy couples together would not be a positive outcome. Research on the development of these “final straw” behaviors seems particularly important in the future. A limitation of the current study is that the pre-intervention assessment did not include the kinds of measures necessary to determine the extent to which couples in this study presented with these problems before marriage. Thus, future research is needed to investigate whether premarital education can help prevent couples from developing some of these “final straw” behaviors and whether it may help some couples with problems such as aggression or substance abuse either get the additional help they will need to change these behaviors or break up. We discuss preliminary ideas about whether/how premarital education might cover each of these final straw issues below.

Over half of all participants cited infidelity as a major reason for divorce and infidelity was the most often endorsed “final straw” reason. Infidelity is not a major focus in PREP, though the curriculum does address the importance of commitment, including protecting one’s relationship from attraction to others. Based on participants’ reports from this study, it may be that premarital programs could be improved by more directly addressing how to reduce the potential for extramarital involvement.

If providers or programs choose to address infidelity explicitly, Markman (2005) provides useful guidelines for covering the topic. These recommendations include informing participants that there are specific situations and developmental time periods within relationships with increased risks for engaging in extramarital relationships (e.g., transition to parenthood, close relationships with attractive alternatives, significant drinking). Furthermore, participants could be informed that the risk for extramarital relationships may increase during stressful times—such as when partners are separated for long periods by work demands or experiencing low marital satisfaction—and this information could be shared with participants. Partners could also be given structure to talk with each other about expectations for fidelity, management of relationships with friends or co-workers who could be attractive alternatives, and boundaries for their relationship. However, one barrier to increasing a focus on the prevention of infidelity in premarital education is that relationship commitment and satisfaction is highest right before marriage ( Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2006 ), so engaged couples may not be receptive or eager to directly address the possibility of future extramarital affairs during this time ( Allen et al., 2005 ).

Substance abuse also appeared to be a prevalent problem at least for half of divorced couples in this sample. Overall, reports indicate that although substance abuse problems may have developed gradually throughout these relationships, this issue constituted the final straw to end the relationship for a number of individuals once the situation was perceived as insurmountable. Substance abuse is not currently addressed in PREP except that all couples attending PREP are provided with information on how to get more help for a range of problems, including substance abuse.

Premarital programs may benefit from educating participants on how substance abuse is not uncommon as a reason for divorce in an effort to encourage participants to address substance abuse problems as early as possible. Such program additions could also include how to recognize and get help for substance abuse and could encourage partners to discuss their expectations for substance use in the relationship. Partners may also benefit from discussing how to support each other in seeking help, should the need ever arise. Furthermore, couples could be taught that if a substance abuse develops in the relationship, there is often a discrepancy between partners regarding perspectives on the extent of the problem, which is evident by this study’s findings.

Domestic violence was cited by over a quarter of couples as a reason for divorce. When asked to elaborate, some described verbal abuse, while others described physical aggression. Often participants explained that they initially believed they could work through the problem, but later found it unbearable, as some participants considered an act of physical aggression as the final straw in their relationship. As others have suggested ( Halford, Markman, Kline, & Stanley, 2003 ), premarital education programs may benefit from teaching participants about recognizing, preventing, and getting help for aggression in relationships. In current models of PREP, all participants learn that aggression is unacceptable and they all receive basic information on ways to get help (e.g., through shelters), as to not put particular couples or individuals in awkward or unsafe circumstances in class. Still, more could be done.

The field continues to debate how to best address this issue, as different types of violence and couples of varying risk may warrant different approaches. M. P. Johnson (1995) distinguishes between situational couple violence and intimate terrorism. Specifically, situational couple violence tends to be much more common and represents aggression that comes out of conflict. It is typically initiated by either partner while intimate terrorism encompasses more controlling, threatening behavior, typically by the male partner.

With 36% of unmarried couples having experienced some form of physical aggression in the last year ( Rhoades, Stanley, Kelmer, & Markman, 2010 ), relationship education programs should take care not to scare couples who have experienced aggression away from seeking help. As is done routinely in PREP, it seems necessary in relationship education that providers and program content emphasize to all participants that any aggression is unacceptable and also suggest specific, local ways to seek help for problems with aggression. To develop further content, an understanding of the literature on aggression and violence, including men’s vs. women’s roles, and the different type of violence, is likely particularly important, as recommendations may be different for different kinds of problems. For example, recommendations for situational couple violence might include couple and/or individual therapy focused on intensive skills to help better manage negative affect and conflict effectively whereas intimate terrorism would most likely call for referrals to shelters or law enforcement. For further recommendations regarding domestic violence and relationship education, see suggestions by Derrington, Johnson, Menard, Ooms, and Stanley (2010) .

Financial hardship

Financial hardship was cited as a major reason for divorce that provided stress on their relationship by over half the sample. Although PREP helps couples learn communication skills to discuss stressful topics in general, it is worth considering whether specific content on money and economic stress is warranted. Participants could be asked to more directly share expectations about finances and learn coping skills for times of significant financial strain. They could also be provided with appropriate community resources to improve or stabilize their financial situations or these resources could be incorporated into relationship education efforts.

Marriage expectations

Almost half of interviewees commented that they did not know enough about the typical course of events in marriage. PREP typically addresses expectations by encouraging participants to recognize and discuss their own expectations for marriage ( Markman et al., 2010 ), but it does not provide explicit information about how marriages and families tend to develop over time. More content on normal marital development could be helpful. For example, information could be provided about how satisfaction typically drops and conflict tends to increase during the transition to parenthood (e.g., Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009b ) and about the course of attraction and sexual desire in relationships.

Previous research has shown that couples who develop serious difficulties, and eventually seek help, usually do so long after the problems have become deeply entrenched ( Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009a ). Thus, relationship education programs may benefit from providing guidelines regarding when to seek professional help and even have couples practice these difficult conversations to encourage them to seek help early and at times when changes are easiest to make. There is survey evidence that premarital education is associated with being more likely to use services later in the marriage ( Williamson, Karney, Trail, & Bradbury, 2012 ), but more direct content on how and when to seek help may be warranted.

This point about seeking help early is complicated by the fact that the majority of participants saw their partner as primarily responsible for participating in the “final straw” behaviors (infidelity, domestic violence, and substance use) and for not working hard enough to save the marriage. Most participants also believed that they, personally, should not have worked harder to save their marriages. Therefore, premarital education may need to focus on encouraging help seeking behaviors in couples with the understanding that most individuals may see their partners as primarily responsible for their difficulties, and therefore, may not feel personally responsible. In addition, the majority of couples displayed a pattern in which the women blamed their ex-husbands while their ex-husbands did not see themselves as responsible. Interestingly, as has been found elsewhere ( Amato & Previti, 2003 ; C. A. Johnson et al., 2001 ), women in this sample were also more likely to eventually file for divorce than men. Thus, it may be especially important that husbands and wives develop realistic expectations about seeking help together, so that they later do not disagree about what circumstances might constitute a need for help.

The Timing of Premarital Education

Our findings show that a considerable number of participants wished that they had known more about their partner before marriage, saying they would have either learned how to handle differences better or left the relationship. Many others believed they had married too young. Also, a portion of participants mentioned that they participated in PREP during a time when the constraints of wedding plans made it more likely for them to ignore factors that may have otherwise ended their relationship. These participant comments highlight the difference between when couples might ideally benefit from premarital education compared to when couples typically seek it. One of the potential benefits of relationship education is that is can help some couples on an ill-advised or premature path toward marriage to reconsider their plans (see Stanley, 2001 ); however, couples typically participate in these programs close to their wedding dates, a time when ending the relationship may be especially difficult.

A potentially stronger overall prevention strategy is to reach people earlier in their relationships, before constraints to marry are in place, or even before individuals enter relationships ( Rhoades & Stanley, 2009 ). Early, individual-oriented relationship education can help individuals develop and practice healthy relationship skills and also help them end unsafe or unhealthy relationships ( Rhoades & Stanley, 2011 ). One recently-developed relationship education curriculum designed for individuals, Within My Reach ( Pearson, Stanley, & Rhoades, 2008 ), has shown success in teaching these skills and helping individuals reach their personal relationship goals ( Antle, Karam, Christensen, Barbee, & Sar, 2011 ). Thus, future research may wish to consider how to encourage individuals and/or couples who have yet to make commitments to marry to participate in relationship education programs, as well as how and when these programs should advise individuals to leave damaging relationships.

Conclusions and Limitations

This study provides new information regarding the reasons for divorce and possible improvements to relationship education programs based on feedback from divorced individuals who participated in PREP premaritally. Although the study focuses on improving the PREP model specifically, relationship education programs working with premarital populations may also find value in our findings, particularly regarding how to cover specific topics deemed important by our participants. Other programs may also benefit from suggestions to provide relationship education earlier and to provide services to help couples master their skill development over time.

This study also has several limitations that warrant discussion. First, respondent reports of their progression toward divorce and premarital education experiences were retrospective and may therefore be biased by the passing of time. Future studies may wish to evaluate relationship problems and reasons for divorce closer to the couple’s decision to divorce. Second, the sample was mostly White and only included participants in heterosexual relationships who married within mostly Christian-based religious organizations. Therefore, future studies are needed to examine whether these findings would be replicated with other groups or cultures. A third limitation is the lack of a comparison group of couples who participated in PREP but did not divorce. As a result, it is not clear whether or not the problems and recommendations these participants identified are specific to this divorced sample, or would translate to couples who remain married. Finally, all participants in this study received PREP when they were engaged to be married so research is needed to evaluate reasons for relationship dissolution and how to improve programs that target individuals and couples in different relationship stages (e.g. dating or married). Nevertheless, this study provides new insight in potential improvements to the content and timing of relationship education.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by award number R01HD053314 from the Eunice Kennedy Shrivner National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shrivner National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or National Institutes of Health.

Contributor Information

Shelby B. Scott, Department of Psychology, University of Denver.

Galena K. Rhoades, Department of Psychology, University of Denver.

Scott M. Stanley, Department of Psychology, University of Denver.

Elizabeth S. Allen, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado – Denver.

Howard J. Markman, Department of Psychology, University of Denver.

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