A statistical summary - compiled by Mike Nappa
"Half of all children [in the U.S.] will witness the breakup of a parent’s marriage. Of these, close to half will also see the breakup of a parent’s second marriage."1
From 1979 to the present, more than two million adults each year have gotten a divorce in America.2
Christians are more likely than non-Christians to experience divorce. (Among Christians, 27% report they've gone through a divorce; only 24% of non-Christians report that they have.)3
Among people attending mainline Protestant churches, one in four (25%) has gone through a divorce; twenty-nine percent of Baptists have gone through a divorce; and roughly one out of every three (34%) non-denominational Protestant church members have gone through a divorce.4
Divorce in America is a $28 billion-a-year industry.5
The generation of Americans with the highest divorce rate (37%) is Builders (people who were ages 53-72 in the year 2000). Their children (Baby Boomers and first-wave GenXers) have experienced the greatest parental marriage disruption in all of American history.6
From 1970 to 1994, the number of divorced adults quadrupled, making "divorced persons" the fastest-growing marital status category in the United States.7
With 27% reporting a divorce, Whites are more likely to get divorced than African-Americans (22%), Hispanics (20%), and Asians (8%)8
Between 1950 and 1980, the number of children involved in divorces and annulments rose 175 percent.9
Since 1972, millions of children each year have lived through the divorce of their parents.10
From 1970 to 1996, the number of children living in single-parent families more than doubled, from 12 percent (roughly one in eight children) to 28 percent (more than one in four).11
Among the millions of children who have seen their parents divorce, one of every 10 will also live through three or more parental marriage breakups.12
Studies in the early 1980s showed that children in repeat divorces earned lower grades and their peers rated them as less pleasant to be around.13
Between 1970 to 1975, the divorce rate rocketed upward by 40 percent.14
Sixty percent of black women who married in the 1960s and early 1970s had already experienced a divorce by 1992.15
Forty percent of children growing up in America today are being raised without their fathers.16
The number of single fathers in America has tripled since 1980.17
Teenagers in single-parent families and in blended families (stepfamilies) are three times more likely to need psychological help within a given year.18
"Compared to children from homes disrupted by death, children from divorced homes have more psychological problems."19
Children living with both biological parents are 20- to 35-percent more physically healthy than children from broken homes.20
"Most victims of child molestation come from single-parent households or are the children of drug ring members."21
"A child living in a female-headed home is 10 times more likely to be beaten or murdered."22
A study of children six years after a parental marriage breakup revealed that—even after all that time—these children tended to be "lonely, unhappy, anxious, and insecure."23
Children of divorce are four times more likely to report problems with peers and friends than are children whose parents have kept their marriages intact.24
Children of divorce, particularly boys, tend to be more aggressive toward others than those children whose parents did not divorce.25
A baby born to a college-educated single mother is more likely to die than is a baby born to a married high school dropout.26
Children of divorce are at a greater risk to experience injury, asthma, headaches, and speech defects than children whose parents have remained married.27
People who come from broken homes are almost twice as likely to attempt suicide than those who do not come from broken homes.28
Children of divorce are about two to three times more likely to live grow up with a parent who struggles with alcoholism than children from an intact marriage.29
Children of divorced parents are roughly two times more likely to drop out of high school than their peers who benefit from living with parents who did not divorce.30
Girls from a broken family are twice as likely to become teen mothers than girls living with biological parents who have not divorced.31
Seventy percent of long-term prison inmates grew up in broken homes.32
"A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families..."
—Psalm 68:5-6a
Notes:
1. Furstenberg, Peterson, Nord, and Zill, "Life Course," 656ff. Cited on page76 of The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher
2. "Divorce Rates Plunge in 25 Community Marriage Policy Cities." http://www.marriagesavers.com/divorcerates.htm
3. Press Release: "Christians Are More Likely to Experience Divorce Than Are Non-Christians." Released by the Barna Research Group, 12/21/99, www.barna.org/cgi-bin/MainTrends.asp
4. Barna Research Group, 12/21/99, www.barna.org/cgi-bin/MainTrends.asp
5. "The Price of Dividing." www.maritalstatus.com/divorce/articles/dividing.html
6. Barna Research Group, 12/21/99, www.barna.org/cgi-bin/MainTrends.asp
7. Arlene Saluter, Marital Status and Living Arrangements: March 1994 , U.S.. Bureau of the Census, March 1996; series P20-484, p, vi.
8. Barna Research Group, 12/21/99, www.barna.org/cgi-bin/MainTrends.asp
9. Brian Willats, Breaking Up is Easy To Do, available from Michigan Family Forum, citing Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1993
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. Cited on page 76 of The Abolition of Marriage by Maggie Gallagher
13. Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), page 71. Cited on page 77 of The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher
14. Brian Willats, Breaking Up is Easy To Do, available from Michigan Family Forum, citing Statistics from National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
15. The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher page 117, Dennis A. Ahlburg and Carol J. DeVita, "New Realities of the American Family," Population Bulletin 47, no.2 (August 1992): 15.
16. Wade Horn and Andrew Bush, "Fathers, Marriage, and Welfare Reform," Hudson Institute Executive Briefing, 1997, Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn Center, 5395 Emerson Way, Indianapolis, IN 46226, (317) 545-1000. Quoted and condensed from National Center for Policy Analysis, Policy Digest, Monday, July 28, 1997 -- "Making Ideas Change the World"
17. From the Census Bureau web page: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html
18. Peter Hill, "Recent Advances in Selected Aspects of Adolescent Development," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 34, no. 1 (1993): 69-99. Cited on page 72 of The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher
19. Robert E. Emery, Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988), pages 57 and 67. Cited on page 60 of The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher
20. Deborah A. Dawson, "Family Structure and Children's Health and Well-being: Data from the National Health Interview Survey on Child Health," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, pp. 573-579.
21. Los Angeles Times, 16 September, 1985. Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation
22. The Legal Beagle, July, 1984. Cited in Amneus, The Garbage Generation, page 113
23. Judith Wallerstein, Ph.D., "The Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Review," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, May 1991, p. 352.
24. Dorothy Tysse and Margaret Crosbie-Burnett, "Moral Dilemmas of Early Adolescents of Divorced and Intact Families: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis," Journal of Early Adolescence 13, no. 2 (May 1993): 168-182.
25. The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 35, citing Robert E. Emery, Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publication, 1988), 50-54.
26. The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 95, citing Eberstadt, "Infant-Mortality", p. 38 Table II
27. Deborah A. Dawson, "Family Structure and Children's Health and Well-being: Data from the National Health Interview Survey on Child Health," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, pp. 573-579.
28. Carmen Noevi Velez and Patricia Cohen, "Suicidal Behavior and Ideation in a Community Sample of Children: Maternal and Youth Reports," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 273 [1988]: 349-356.
29. Lee Robins and Darrel Regier, Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 103
30. Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps , (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 41
31. Ibid, pg. 53
32. Horn and Bush, "Fathers, Marriage, and Welfare Reform."
