Palmetto Family Council

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The Broken Promises of Divorce
How Divorce Hurts Children & Adults

The 1998 South Carolina Marital Health Index finds that the divorced have significant regrets about their decision to end their marriage. Our research found that 62% of divorced adults in the Palmetto State wish they had tried harder to keep their marriage together. In addition, this study found that 76% of the divorced population say that people who divorce typically trade one set of problems for another, while just 67% of the general population believe this.¹ These findings reflect a disturbing level of disappointment with the prospects of divorce improving individual happiness.

There is a great deal of social science research to indicate that these feelings are reasonable.

Greater Risk of Suicide
Research on suicide published in Social Science Quarterly showed that, of many variables, divorce had the strongest relationship to suicide rates and marriage had the weakest.² Research done by the Centers for Disease Control and published in the American Journal of Public Health reveals that divorced individuals are three times more likely to commit suicide than those who are married.³

Divorce and Decreased Health and Well-Being
Research done at Erasmus University in Rotterdam shows that "married people have the lowest morbidity rates, while the divorced show the highest."⁴

The National Center for Health Statistics finds that married women suffer half the injuries that divorced women do.⁵

Dr. Walter Gove, working from Vanderbilt University, found that divorced men are over 9 times more likely to die of tuberculosis and over 4 times more likely to die from diabetes than their married counterparts. A divorced male is 3.4 times more likely to die from any cause than a married male and a divorced female is 2.0 times more likely to die from any cause then her married counterpart. ⁶

One of the most authoritative studies ever done in the United States on mental health found that the divorced are nearly twice as likely to suffer from any mental illness than those who are married.⁷

Additional research done at Yale and UCLA reports, "Researchers have consistently found that highest rates of mental disorder among the divorced and separated [and] the lowest among the married... Compared to the married, divorced

persons are six to ten times more likely to use inpatient psychiatric facilities and four to five times more likely to be clients in outpatient clinics."⁸

Divorce and Increased Risk of Assault
From 1973 to 1992, the violent crime victimization rates for females (per 1,000 females age twelve or over) were 45 for divorced women and 11 for married women. This rate was 43 for single women.⁹

Impact of Divorce upon Children
The literature on how divorce negatively impacts children is extensive and rich. Divorce diminishes every area of a child's life and follows that child into adulthood.

Nicholas Zill, one of the nation's leading researchers on how divorce impacts children, found that 55 percent of children in intact families had positive relationships with both parents, while only 26 percent of children from divorced homes reported positive relationships with both parents.¹⁰

Zill elaborates, "The common belief that parental divorce poses long-term hazards for the children involved is supported by [an] analysis of longitudinal data from...a nationally representative sample of American youth." He continues, "Effects of marital discord and family disruption were visible twelve to twenty-two years later in poor relationships with parents, and [there is] an increased likelihood of dropping out of high school and receiving psychological help."¹¹

For a more thorough treatment of how divorce impacts adults and children, see Glenn T. Stanton's Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society, (Colorado Springs, Pinon Press, 1997). To order, call Palmetto Family Council at 803/733-5600.

ENDNOTES

1 Glenn T. Stanton, 1998 South Carolina Marital Health Index (Palmetto Family Council, 1998), pp. 38-42.
2 Jeffery Barr, et al., "Catholic Religion and Suicide: The Mediating Effect of Divorce," Social Science Quarterly, 1994, 75:300-318.
3 Jack Smith, et al., "Marital Status and the Risk of Suicide," American Journal of Public Health, 1988, 78:78-80.
4 I. M. Joung, et al., "Differences in Self-Reported Morbidity by Marital Status and by Living Arrangement," International Journal of Epidemiology, 1994, 23:91-97.
5 Robert Coombs, "Marital Status and Personal Well-Being: A Literature Review," Family Relations, 1991, 40:97-102.
6 Walter Gove, "Sex, Marital Status and Mortality," American Journal of Sociology, 1973, 79:45-67.
7 Lee Robins and Darrel Regier, Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 44.
8 David Williams, et al., Marital Status and Psychiatric Disorders Among Black and Whites," Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 1992, 33:140-157.
9 U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Highlights from 20 years of Surveying Crime Victims: The National Crime Victimization Survey, 1973-1992 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1993), p. 18.
10 James Peterson and Nicholas Zill, "Marital Disruption, Parent-Child Relationships and Behavior Problems in Children," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1986, 48:295-307.
11 Nicholas Zill, et al., "Long-Term Effects of Parental Divorce on Parent Child Relationships, Adjustment and Achievement in Young Adulthood," Journal of Family Psychology, 1993, 7:91-103.

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