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Source: The Washington Post June 27, 2010
"The Marriage Myth: Why do so Many Couples Divorce? Maybe They Just Don't Know How to be Married"

By: Ellen McCarthy --  As a punishing rain lashed across the narrow peninsula of Ocean City, Heidi and Kirk Noll stood facing each other in a windowless conference room of the aging Carousel Resort Hotel.

Amid stackable chairs and retractable walls, they and a half-dozen other bleary-eyed couples clasped hands and pledged their lives to each other. Heidi's hair was still damp for the 9 a.m. ceremony, which took only 15 minutes, despite multiple interruptions from hotel staffers opening heavy doors that led to an atrium where the hum of a Zamboni on an indoor ice rink mingled with the smell of maple syrup from breakfast.

Vows successfully exchanged, and blessed by an Army chaplain, the couples clamored back onto the chartered bus that had brought them here, and made the wearing slog home to Washington.

It was an experience, the Nolls insist, that saved their marriage.  Read the full article.

Also available: TIps and Resources on Marriage Education.

Source: CA Healthy Marriages Coalition June 23, 2010
CA Healthy Marriages Coalition Releases New Booklet

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition has recently released the latest in their series of Healthy Marriages booklets -- Healthy Marriages, Responsible Fatherhood.  This booklet shows the research that links father involvement and the impact on children and how marriage affects father involvement.

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition has put together a series of these booklets to show the impact that healthy marriages have on various aspects of life.  Learn More.

 

Source: Newsweek June 08, 2010
"The Rise of the 'Silver Divorce'"

Newsweek -- They are high-school sweethearts who seemed happily married for 40 years after raising four children. But the announcement that Al and Tipper Gore were splitting up was not a surprise to researchers who study the most divorcing cohort in American history. Al is 61 and Tipper is 62, which means they came of age in the 1960s and '70s, an era when even the most intimate relationships were radically altered by huge social upheaval. "This is the generation that weathered a lot of changes that didn't match their expectations when they walked down the aisle," says Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania who studies marriage trends. "In some respects, it's a miracle how many of them stayed together."

Marriage researchers have long known that the rockiest years are the early ones, and, generally speaking, the longer a couple is married, the less likely they are to divorce. That's still true, says Stevenson, but "silver divorce" is no longer rare, and that's particularly true for the baby-boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964. In the 1950s, many couples married just past age 20, but only 8 percent were divorced at the 10-year mark. After 20 years, just 19 percent had split; after 30 years, 26 percent were divorced; and after 40 years, only 30 percent were no longer together.

The Gores married in 1970, when divorce rates had just begun a dramatic spike upward. Their contemporaries had much less stable marriages. Within 10 years, 27 percent of their unions had broken up. And after 30 years together, more than half were divorced. As those couples now start to hit the 40-year mark, the rate is slowing down, but some continue to divorce.

"If you look at every single year of marriage, they have the highest divorce rates of anyone born before or after them," Stevenson says. In fact, she adds, this group of baby boomers is most responsible for the commonly heard statistic that one out of every two first marriages will eventually end in divorce. Based on their track record to date, however, baby boomers' divorce rates will clearly end up being higher than that. About 4 percent of divorces every year now involve those married 40 years or more, she says.

Read the Full Article.

 

Source: USA Today June 04, 2010
Marriages Mix Races or Ethnicities More than Ever

By Mary Brophy Marcus -- Marriages between spouses of different races and ethnicities are more common than ever before, say authors of a report by the Pew Research Center.

A record 15% - about one out of every seven - of new marriages in 2008 landed in the "Marrying Out" category, the report says.

The new figure is six times the intermarriage rate of roughly 2% in 1960, says senior demographer Jeff Passel, the report's lead author. Several factors are fueling the trend, he says, including the weakening of long-standing cultural taboos and new waves of immigrants from Asia and Latin America.

"We seem to have a much more open society than we had 30 to 50 years ago, with a more diverse population," Passel says. "There are more opportunities for people of different groups to come together and interact - where we live, work and go to school."

The research, which analyzed U.S. Census data, examined new marriages between four major groups: blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians.

Read More.

 

Source: Minnesota Public Radio May 28, 2010
New Minnesota Law Assists Couples Who Want to Avoid Divorce

St. Paul, Minn. - Minnesota courts are working to process divorces more quickly. Research shows the longer divorce cases drag on in the courts, the more animosity builds up, particularly if couples have children.

But some wonder if speedy divorces are too quickly rushing people to end marriages -- even couples who might have some hope of reconciling. To address such concerns, the Legislature is considering a bill that family advocates say would provide an "off ramp" on the superhighway to divorce.

"We have data on 2,500 divorcing people in Hennepin County. [They are] parents who are a lot more ambivalent and reluctant about getting a divorce than anybody realized," said Bill Doherty, a marriage expert at the University of Minnesota.

Doherty and his research team, which included a family court judge, surveyed 2,484 divorcing parents in 2008 and 2009, and found that 70 percent of couples agreed divorce was the best course of action. But in about one-third of the cases, at least one spouse wasn't sure.

Read the Full Article