week 10

divorce

- "is the legal dissolution of marriage according to the laws of the state." - Divorce has a long history and is not limited to modern relationships or marriage. - There are many examples of divorce throughout history (e.g., upper-class couples in the Roman Empire, ancient Jewish laws permitting divorce). - Some researchers also use the term relationship dissolution to apply to the separation of a couple in a committed relationship who has never been married (especially when those relationships include children)

Divorce was quite common among upper-class couples in the Roman Empire

- But by the time of early Christianity, religious authorities introduced strong rules against divorce. - Separation by mutual agreement or desertion occurred, but individuals could not legitimately remarry unless they were granted an annulment by the Church. - Catholic doctrine allows an individual to remarry only if the first marriage has been annulled; divorce is not permitted. - Annulments are very difficult to obtain and they are uncommon. - Annulments are an important part of the history of marriage dissolution because they highlight the influence of religious institutions and the Church on the institution of marriage. - Today, the institutional arena of the state has much more power and authority over the institution of marriage than do religious institutions.

REMARRIAGE AND BLENDED FAMILIES: PERCENT GETTING REMARRIED

- Multiple marriages are most common for individuals ages 55 to 64 years. - Of individuals ages 55 to 65 years, one-third have been married more than once - Even though divorce is often viewed as a negative event, the stigma of divorce does not seem to deter remarriage very much - Overall, 2.9 percent of divorced or widowed adults got remarried in 2015 - The differences between racial and ethnic groups are relatively small. - However, there is a large difference by gender, education, and, especially, age

there are three ways of measuring the "divorce rate"

- The crude divorce rate - the refined divorce rate - divorce-marriage ratio

separation

- is the formal or informal separation of married spouses into different households. - Some states require a legal separation before a divorce can be granted.

GENDERED OUTCOMES OF DIVORCE:

- the increase in available income for men and the decrease in the available income for women and children if the children live with the mother and the spouses' incomes remain the same. (Cohen 2016) - Overall, mothers are about 7 percent more likely to be in poverty than fathers. - among those who divorced in the last year, women are more than twice as likely to be poor. - This gender difference in poverty rates is a crucial feature of the consequences of divorce, especially for children since children are frequently placed with their mothers (Ruggles et al. 2016). - Smock et al. (1999) found that women face economic distress from divorce, but they would face economic hardship even if they stayed married (Rutter 2010:165). - divorce is not always a cause although it is a factor in these gendered outcomes of divorce

Mason argues that stepparents are not awarded rights over their stepchildren, which can limit their ability to parent

- "Stepparents in most states have no obligation during the marriage to support their stepchildren, nor do they enjoy any right of custody or control. - if the marriage terminates through divorce or death, they usually have no rights to custody or even visitation, - stepparents have no obligation to pay child support following divorce, even if their stepchildren have depended on their income for many years. - In turn, stepchildren have no right of inheritance in the event of the stepparent's death (they are, however, eligible for Social Security benefits in most cases)" (Mason 2005:279) - This is troublesome for family organization and amplifies boundary ambiguity for families. - Mason later outlines several policy proposals and argues that a reformist approach would be best in ensuring stepparent authority in families as well as helping to ensure and support a child's (or children's) well-being

some scholars have found that you cannot compare children from divorced parents to those overall because these families are different based on factors that pre-date a divorce

- Andrew Cherlin and some colleagues used longitudinal studies where families were all married at the start of the study. - His results mirrored Hetherington's - 20-25% of children of divorce were at-risk for problems, so the majority were fine, but importantly, Cherlin and his colleagues built on these findings by noting predisposition effects: - differences between the children of divorced parents and married parents that were present prior to the divorce. - Families who stay married and families who divorce are different. - As such, the study suggests that there are selection effects when scholars study children of divorce without considering predisposition effects - Still, there are post disruption effects as well. - Cherlin and his colleagues found that "financial hardship and the loss of parental involvement were key culprits" that "made life more difficult for children of divorce" (Rutter 2010:163, citing Cherlin et al. 1991)

the United States has a high rate of remarriage

- Cherlin calls this the marriage-go-round: Americans highly value marriage, and 85-90% of Americans will get married, but America also has the highest divorce rate of any comparable Western country. - the United States is also a country that values and prioritizes individualism. - These contribute to a high rate of marriage, divorce, and then remarriage, which is the "marriage-go-round" - We want to be married, at the same time, though, we're very individualistic, and that has deep cultural roots too.

For many U.S. individuals and families, remarriage is a part of the modern family arrangement.

- Cohen has found that most people who divorce eventually remarry, and most new marriages involve at least one partner who was previously married. - Thus, the combination of children and spouses from previous marriages form a wide variety of new family types, and there can be confusion about what to call these new family members. - Traditionally, the word "step" was added to a kin label to indicate that a family member was related by marriage and not by blood (i.e., genetically). - Today, the word step is also used even in relationships that do not involve formal marriage. - It can become even more complicated when the state becomes involved or unrelated family members adopt children. - Some states have even created legal definitions for new types of family members and arrangements with accompanying rights and responsibilities (Pollet 2010)

The modern family is much more under the control of state authority than it is under the control of religious authority.

- Divorce as a legal procedure is not the only phenomenon of interest to sociologists. - Sociologists are also concerned with all manner of marriage dissolutions, which occur through permanent separation or divorce.

Acosta raises two different concepts for us in the reading: families of origin vs. families of choice

- Families of origin are families from which someone is raised that include parents, siblings, and other relatives. - This term is used generally in contrast to families of choice, particularly for LGBTQ people - Families of choice "capture how gays and lesbians choose and define family as those to whom they feel close, thereby challenging heteronormative assumptions about nuclear family" (Gaszo & McDaneil 2013:374). - Thus, the stepmothers in Acosta's (2013) study are defined as "families of choice." - Conflict arises when, as we see, social assumptions about sexuality and family life are challenged by women moving into relationships with their lesbian partners - sometimes families of choice need not involve children but instead are a network of close friends who fulfill many of the functions of the family - People in the LGBTQ community may have a good relationship with their family of origin and still have a family of choice, but often a family of choice is formed when the family of origin is unsupportive

Since parents may be in different households, with different partners through remarriage or cohabitation, knowing exactly who is and is not included in one's family is important

- For children, the establishment of trust and boundaries is an important part of a healthy childhood development - it is also important for everyone involved in the family to agree on these boundaries. - When these family boundaries are confused or blurred, it creates a situation of boundary ambiguity.

Li (2008) found that the type of parenting children of parents who end up divorcing receive is different than the kind of parenting children receive from parents who remain married (Rutter 2020:167).

- Li (2010) solves a problem of comparing children of divorce to children of married families, though. - Li studies the effect of marital dissolution for the same child over time. - In other words, is a child who is well-behaved likely to have behavioral issues after their parents' marriage ends in divorce? - Comparing a child to themselves, pre and post break-up, is a better measure for the effect of divorce on children than to compare them to children of families who never divorce - Li's data included a sample of 6,332 children from a representative sample where mothers rated their children's behavior every two years (cheating, deliberately breaking things, crying or arguing frequently, etc.). - The study found that there were barely any detected differences for each child that experienced a divorce. - The differences in assessment were not statistically significant - Still, it is important to note that this is not inconsistent with studies who do find some effect of divorce on children. - The study focused on "the average effect of divorce for the divorced," so while there were no behavior problems for some children, the average of the scores may have offset the effects for those who do experience behavior effects. - As such, if this is the case, "certain divorces harm children, others benefit them" (Li 2010:176). - The findings suggest that the effect of divorce on children is not uniformly bad, and may be, for some families, good

Mignon Moore (2008) studied Black lesbian women and how they coparent children with their partners in stepfamilies

- Moore finds that these couples mostly prioritize economic independence rather than egalitarian distribution of household chores where the moms who are biologically related to the child tend to perform more household tasks and childcare. - Here, we see the importance of the role of the state in shaping Black lesbian stepfamilies - Moore's survey of participants shows that biological moms perform more household labor each week than the stepparent. - While lesbian partners recognize this difference, Moore (2008:346) finds "that biological mothers accept the greater responsibility for various aspects of household organization because having control over those areas gives them a stronger say, and sometimes the deciding voice, in other aspects of family life, particularly money management and childrearing." - the division of household labor is a tradeoff for lesbian biological mothers for maintaining more control over childrearing/parenting decisions while ceding household organization and management of finances to their partners

In Acosta, we saw how lesbian stepfamilies, both those who are immigrants and those who are not, struggle to gain legal authority over their partners' children

- Some in the study were not married, so the laws that Mason (2005) examines would not necessarily apply. - However, where laws give stepparents legal authority over children, unmarried stepparents may be better able to advocate for themselves and their roles as parents if a problem were to arise with the custodial parent

Cohen elaborates on several definitions that are important for considering remarried and blended families, including stepparent, stepchild, and half-sibling

- Still, cohabiting, non-married families add to the variation family diversity. - Some families may recognize the connection between cohabitating partners and children; others may not. - for Cohen, a blended family is "any family that includes stepparents, step siblings, or half-siblings." - The word blended indicates that a family is made up of several family types and implies that more than one family is combined - The graph on this slide show that 13% of children live in blended families, so this is becoming a common experience for children - a growing number of children are growing up in single-parent households while another growing number are being raised by grandparents.

SELECTION EFFECTS AND CHILDREN OF DIVORCE

- Studies sometimes come to different conclusions regarding the effect of divorce on children. - We know people who divorce are different than those who stay married, so the two populations (those who stay married vs. those who divorce) are already different - so there is already a selection bias between these two groups. - Those who do get a divorce and those who do not are different types of people, so the "selection effect," is that the study assumes these populations are the same and are just as likely to make the choice to divorce when evidence shows they are not - In terms of outcomes for children of divorce one study that used a representative sample found that "while about 10% of children in the general population have behavioral or school-related problems, 20-25 percent of children from divorced families have these problems (but about 80 percent of children from divorced families do not have such problems) (Rutter 2010:161, citing Hetherington 1989) - Still, it is unclear from this study whether the divorce was the cause of this change or if it was something else

DIVORCE AND MARRIAGE: THE INDEPENDENCE EFFECT AND THE INCOME EFFECT

- When women and men are economically independent and have the means to survive on their own, they are more likely to leave unhappy relationships. - For women, this means if they have employment outside of the home and it can give them self-sufficiency, they are more likely to leave unhappy marriages. - This has been called the independence effect of women's employment (Teachman 2010). - But a woman's independence or self-sufficiency alone does not cause her to seek a divorce. - Instead, an employed woman is only more likely to divorce if she is unhappy in her marriage. - Thus, evidence does not suggest that a woman's employment causes divorce (Sayer et al. 2011). - On the other hand, independence can work to strengthen marriage as well. - Couples with high levels of education and high incomes are less likely to get divorced (Martin 2006). - This is called the income effect of employment. - Researchers have linked having a higher income with increased stability and happiness and reduced stress

divorce-marriage ratio

- according to Cohen, is what many people refer to as the divorce rate. - It is the probability or odds of a married couple getting divorced in the future. - there are two measures that can help provide a good generalization: - Look at the marriage and divorce history of older people today. - Calculate what would happen if a recent year happened over and over again. - Regardless of how divorce is calculated or counted, its occurrence is still much higher than it was for the past 150 years but has plateaued (or fallen slightly, depending on the measure) since the 1980s

Coparenting

- comes up in the Acosta (2013) reading, particularly "co-mothers," which is a similar definition to parenting, - but it is different in that it typically involves separated or unmarried people sharing caretaking and socialization duties of children - Coparenting research, including in lesbian relationships, tend to be on white middle-class women who tend to be committed to egalitarian relationships, or relationships that evenly divide housework and paid work. - In the Acosta (2013) study, we read about co-mothers, which is just to define the fact that Acosta was only interviewing LBQ women. - As such, they were all only mothers who were co-parenting. - We see some difficulties arise in coparenting in lesbian stepfamilies in this study, including one's role in relation to a non-biological child as well as how the state, by virtue of not recognizing lesbian relationships (at the time of the study), may limit a co-mother's authority over a child who is not biologically theirs

Annulment of marriage

- is a religious or legal determination that a marriage was never valid. - An annulment voids a marriage, and the marriage is then treated as if it never occurred at all.

crude divorce rate

- is simply the number of divorces that have occurred in one year in the entire population. - It is used to tell how common divorce is in the entire country. - also useful as a rough comparison to ascertain long-term historical trends even back when the data were not as plentiful. - Currently, the crude divorce rate in the United States is 3.9 divorces for every 1,000 people in the country.

Boundary ambiguity

- occurs when "family members do not know or do not agree on who is in the family and what role each person plays" (Carroll, Olson, and Buckmiller 2007) - These boundaries can become increasingly more complicated with more family members and with changing family arrangements and living situations - As we see in Mason (2005:285) In the case of stepfamilies, there are unclear or absent societal norms and standards for how to define the remarried family, especially the role of the stepparent in relation to the stepchild." - Since roles are unclear due to incomplete institutionalization, symbolic interactionists argue that there is ambiguity in family life that can be troublesome for people to navigate

. In recent history, divorces have become more common

- such that the period from 1960 to 1980, there was a dramatic increase in divorce that was termed the divorce revolution (Weitzman 1985). - in part driven by the liberalization of family law and the rise of no-fault divorces during the 1970s, which helped to make marriage legally recognized as a voluntary contract between two individuals. - Reforms to the legal system were influenced by the feminist movement and geared toward emancipating women from traditions and laws that reinforced gender inequality, - which made it legal to get a divorce for personal reasons rather than making an accusation or charge against the other party. - Further, either spouse could demand a divorce and did not need a specific reason

the refined divorce rate

- tells us how many divorces there are for every 1,000 married couples in the country. - This rate tells us how common divorce is among married couples specifically, not just in the entire population. - This figure can be further broken down by education, race, ethnicity, and so on.

scholars often suggest that we be mindful of selection effects,

- which is a problem that occurs when the cause being studied has already been determined by the outcome that is under investigation (Cohen 2018:305) - a selection effect can occur when the survey has a non-random sample. - As such, the results for a study may be skewed by obtaining a non-representative sample of a population. - This could happen because people who sign up for surveys may be different than the people who don't - While some measures can account for some selection effects, it is always important that a study acknowledge what selection effect may be present in their sample - Some people call this selection bias, which means their sample is skewed to provide them with certain results from the start.

marital dissolution

the end of a marriage through permanent separation or divorce