Divorce is an event affecting couples, children, families, and community. Little is known about the perception of Iranian couples who intended to get divorced with regard to the process of decision making on divorce. The purpose of this study was to build a theory about the process that leads the couples to get divorced. The grounded theory in qualitative paradigm was used. Ten couples were int...

The purpose of this study was to explore adult attachment as a means of understanding the intergenerational transmission of divorce, that is, the propensity for the children of divorce to end their own marriages. Participants included 157 couples assessed 3 months prior to their weddings and 6 years later. Participants completed the Adult Attachment Interview and questionnaires about their rela...

Research on the psychological health of children living with unhappily married or divorced parents is reviewed, and it is concluded that interparental conflict accounts for many of the emotional difficulties found among children living in both circumstances. Hypotheses based on attachment theory, modeling, inconsistent discipline, psychosocial stress, family systems theory, and child effects ar...

Spouses' emotional ties to family early in marriage are linked to marital outcomes, but little is known about how these ties affect marital stability and whether these effects vary by race and gender. The present study examines the links between emotional ties to family of origin and in-laws in the first year of marriage and marital stability over the first 16 years of marriage. Data were colle...

We reconsider the well known Becker-Coase (BC ) argument, according to which changes in divorce laws should not affect divorce rates, in the context of households which consume public goods in addition to private goods. For this result to hold, utility must be transferable both within marriage and upon divorce, and the marginal rate of substitution between public and private consumption needs t...

This article critically evaluates the available data on trends in divorce in the United States. We find that both vital statistics and retrospective survey data on divorce after 1990 underestimate recent marital instability. These flawed data have led some analysts to conclude that divorce has been stable or declining for the past three decades. Using new data from the American Community Survey...

The Effect of Divorce Laws on Divorce Rates in Europe This paper analyzes a panel of 18 European countries spanning from 1950 to 2003 to examine the extent to which the legal reforms leading to “easier divorce” that took place during the second half of the 20th century have contributed to the increase in divorce rates across Europe. We use a quasi-experimental set-up and exploit the different t...

Two nonmutually exclusive hypotheses can explain why divorce is an adaptive strategy to improve reproductive success. Under the 'better option hypothesis', only one of the two partners initiates divorce to secure a higher-quality partner and increases reproductive success after divorce. Under the 'incompatibility hypothesis', partners are incompatible and hence they may both increase reproducti...