33 Comments

arty
February 22nd, 2011 | 9:58 am

The reasoning of the piece above sounds dangerously tautological, to me. Since “serious” practice of faith would have to include an outright rejection/deep skepticism of divorce, you end up with, “people who seriously reject divorce don’t get divorced”, which is, well, obvious.

Stuart Koehl
February 22nd, 2011 | 10:10 am

I trust none of these statistics, because they can be both simplistic and fallacious. Leave aside the fact that everyone lies about (a) religion and (b) sex, so that asking about someone’s level of religious commitment (or marital fidelity) is practically a waste of time. The fact is, the result depends on the methodology used. The simplest way is to compare the number of marriages with the number of divorces, and derive a percentage. But that is misleading. Take my own family, for instance: I have a sister and a brother. My sister and I have been married just once, and are still married; my brother has been married four times and divorced three times. That’s six marriages divided by three people. Statistically, each of us has been married twice. So, extending the example, “serial monogamists” skew the results. Call it the “Larry King Factor”.

I have yet to see a survey in which a methodology was adopted to take into consideration the duration of first marriages, which is the real point. Even there, you have a problem accounting for people who marry for the first time to someone marrying for the second or third time.

Also, these figures are meaningless in an historical context because divorce has become far more accessible in the last half century than it was previously. Until the arrival of “no fault” divorce, such actions were difficult, expensive and messy. In the UK prior to the 20th century, procuring a divorce required 6000 pounds and an act of Parliament. Divorce was therefore rare. In many countries, particularly Catholic ones, divorce was illegal. Under such conditions, rates of divorce were, of course, very low.

But were marriages any more successful then than they are today? A couple of facts to consider: First, most marriages did not last long because, well, most people did not last long. When the life expectancy of men was in the 50s and women often died in childbirth, most marriages did not last more than a decade or so.

Second, if a marriage failed, most people did not get a divorce, they just moved out. And many of them moved away, and remarried, without ever formally dissolving their previous marriage. The country was big, communications were poor, and people had things to do. More often, though, people just cohabited after the breakup of their marriages (Charles Dickens is one of the more famous people who followed this route).

So, overall, it’s hard to say whether the figure of 38% is significant in any way whatsoever, particularly with regard to the quality and duration of marriages. It would have to be put into some sort of historical context that truly compared apples with apples, in order to be meaningful.

pentamom
February 22nd, 2011 | 10:57 am

“First, most marriages did not last long because, well, most people did not last long. When the life expectancy of men was in the 50s and women often died in childbirth, most marriages did not last more than a decade or so. ”

This is the “life expectancy fallacy.” The life expectancy being in the 50′s does not mean that most men made it to 50-something and then dropped over. What it means is that most men made it into their 60′s and 70′s, but lots and lots of children died to make the average age at death much lower. If you made it to 20, chances are you’d make it to 60.

Further, even if you have a scenario where most men do not make it past 55, I’m not sure where you get “a decade or so” in a culture in which men generally married by 30, frequently by 25, and often younger in the lower classes. By my reckoning, that’s commonly 25 years and frequently much more. Yes, there were the more frequent women dying in childbirth, but that was not so rampant that people did not generally anticipate many decades together, or that you were somehow beating the odds if you made it to 20 years.

I’m not saying that your overall point about the dubiousness of comparing historical length of marriage with the modern divorce rate isn’t a good one, but that particular statistic of “a decade or so” just looks questionable to me, the way you’ve explained it.

Todd
February 22nd, 2011 | 11:01 am

Communication is probably a greater factor in maintaining marriages, though deeply committed religious people probably communicate as a matter of course.

“Call it the “Larry King Factor”.”

Or the Newt Gingrich Method, to reference a Catholic of note.

Stuart’s point about the length of marriages is well-considered. I remember reading somewhere that the average marriage today lasts 14 years–twice the length of the average marriage of the year 1800.

More of a concern to me is how the Church equips couples for lasting marriage. Or are we satisfied they go through the hoops we provide for their engagement, then leave them on their own resources after the wedding day.

Stephen M. Barr
February 22nd, 2011 | 11:28 am

Some interesting stats on various religious and ethinic groups in the U.S. are contained in a study understaken by a Jewish organization in 2005, entitled “Jewish Distinctiveness in America: A Statistical Portrait”. The link is

http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582 -4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D
/JewishDistinctivenessAmerica_TS_April2005
.pdf

Here is one of the (many) tables: “percentage ever divorced”

Fundamentalist Protestant 29.0
Liberal Protestant 28.1
Moderate Protestant 27.8
None 25.6
Other Religions 24.8
Jewish 20.6
Catholic 19.7

This doesn’t distinguish the devout from the nominal. But given the large sample sizes in this study, the differences are statistically significant. (One should note that non-religious people divorce less, because they marry less.
Divorce rate divided by marriage rate is actually very high for people of no religion.)

MRS
February 22nd, 2011 | 11:56 am

I also agree with Dr. Veith, but the broader point stands and Christians should be free to point out that while we are yet sinful and wrong-headed (simul justus et peccator), there is a difference between someone who claims Christianity and someone is actively engaged in it, and there is also a difference in divorce rates.

Stuart Koehl
February 22nd, 2011 | 1:17 pm

“If you made it to 20, chances are you’d make it to 60.”

Unless you were a woman. The odds of dying in childbirth typically ran around 50%. That’s tossing a coin every time a woman gets pregnant. Yes, there are a few women who spawned a dozen kids without a hitch. On the other hand, I’ve plowed through enough death records to know that far more women died in the their twenties or early thirties due to complications of pregnancy or after giving birth.

For men, it’s another matter, but to say that if you got to twenty, you would reach sixty misses the point: historically, more men remarried than women. Usually a man would marry for the first time in his mid-twenties, to a woman in her early twenties. But if you look at second, third and subsequent marriages, it’s a man in his thirties, forties and fifties marrying a girl barely out of her teens. So, you have men checking out in their late fifties or early sixties, but women tending to check out a decade or two earlier–except for a few who managed to beat the odds and become crones.

pentamom
February 22nd, 2011 | 1:58 pm

“The odds of dying in childbirth typically ran around 50%.”

Wait, is that per birth, or per woman? I can’t see how the human race could have survived (let alone bring about the 19th century population explosion) if statistically every woman could not bear more than two children. It simply couldn’t be the case that “statistically speaking,” every woman died upon bearing her second child, since you need more than one birth per person to sustain a population. I think it must mean that half of all child-bearing women (or all women?) died in childbirth at some point.

But I take your point.

Blake
February 22nd, 2011 | 2:11 pm

The reasoning of the piece above sounds dangerously tautological, to me. Since “serious” practice of faith would have to include an outright rejection/deep skepticism of divorce, you end up with, “people who seriously reject divorce don’t get divorced”, which is, well, obvious.

Here is what the original article says:

“The factor making the most difference is religious commitment and practice. Couples who regularly practice any combination of serious religious behaviors and attitudes — attend church nearly every week, read their Bibles and spiritual materials regularly; pray privately and together; generally take their faith seriously, living not as perfect disciples, but serious disciples — enjoy significantly lower divorce rates than mere church members, the general public and unbelievers.”

I find it amusing that we accept, point-blank and without question, various studies that quantify happiness, well-being, and so on – think for example of the studies that claim to “prove” that the children of gays and lesbians “aren’t harmed”, are “well adjusted”, and so on – but the initial reaction whenever the same sort of study comes out in favor of conservative life-styles always includes one skeptic, pointing out that you just can’t measure how religious people are, or you just can’t measure how much time and money people give to charity, or you just can’t measure….

Measuring peoples’ religious beliefs is a lot more straightforward than defining “happiness”.

Though I do share the initial skepticism at the entire practice of trying to quantify things that are ethical and moral, rather than material (especially when the goal is so obviously partisan, whether it’s partisan-left or partisan-right, it still makes me wonder about both motive and bias).

ianthis
February 22nd, 2011 | 2:32 pm

I would be interested to see a source for a 50% number. That is plain ridiculous. Are we worse suited to having babies than cows are? How did people end up with 7 or 8 kids?

arty
February 22nd, 2011 | 2:39 pm

I can’t quite figure out if Blake is disagreeing with me or not, so maybe I should clarify my point. If part of our definition of “serious Christian” is “people who don’t believe in divorce”, which I think is entirely reasonable, then you end up with “people who don’t think you should bet divorced, don’t get divorced,” which isn’t all that stunning. I agree, that the idea of quantifying happiness is problematic, but that’s probably due to the fact that sociology is usually the search for nonexistent “laws” of social motion, and so tautological methodology is probably an inevitability…

Carson
February 22nd, 2011 | 3:39 pm

I read this as basically, “People willing to work at one thing that’s hard don’t give up easily on something else that’s also hard.” This does not strike me as earth-shattering news.

Stuart Koehl
February 22nd, 2011 | 4:02 pm

“Are we worse suited to having babies than cows are? How did people end up with 7 or 8 kids?”

For every woman who had 7 or 8 kids, there were several women who died trying to give birth to No.1, and several others who died somewhere during Nos. 2-6. It averages out. Some women are genetically predisposed to bear children, others are not. Without modern medical assistance, my wife probably would have died giving birth to our first child. On the other hand, I know women who pop them out like PEZ from a Mickey Mouse dispenser. It helps that doctors now know enough to wash their hands and sterilize their instruments.

We actually are not as well suited to having babies than cows, and cows are not as good at it as you think. Today, most get expert veterinary assistance, whereas in the past, nature took its course. One doesn’t have to be an expert on animal husbandry, merely read the various James Herriott books.

Stuart Koehl
February 22nd, 2011 | 4:04 pm

” find it amusing that we accept, point-blank and without question, various studies that quantify happiness, well-being, and so on – think for example of the studies that claim to “prove” that the children of gays and lesbians “aren’t harmed”, are “well adjusted”, and so on – but the initial reaction whenever the same sort of study comes out in favor of conservative life-styles always includes one skeptic, pointing out that you just can’t measure how religious people are, or you just can’t measure how much time and money people give to charity, or you just can’t measure….”

I’m skeptical of all attitudinal surveys. Invariably, the lead to platitudinal results.

Stuart Koehl
February 22nd, 2011 | 4:05 pm

I’m also inclined to think human nature is pretty immutable, so that we are no better or worse than our ancestors, and our descendants in their turn will be no better or worse than we are.

Jeff Burton
February 22nd, 2011 | 4:07 pm

The statistic is blunt and hides other interesting data. For instance, how many of the 38% came to faith after divorce?

Hank
February 22nd, 2011 | 4:13 pm

I am also very skeptical of the 50% death rate for childbirth. A quick internet search resulted in a lot of websites that looked very unreliable and this one perhaps trustworthy footnote: “Hanawalt, Barbara, Growing Up in Medieval London (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 43 and 234. The author cites 14.4 maternal deaths for every 1,000 births in 15th century Florence.” Hanawalt’s book is on googlebooks, and it also says that roughly 20% of Florentine women died of pregnancy and childbearing related problems. That’s is still very high, but 50% is 2.5 times that.
From a wikipedia entry we have: “The historical level of maternal deaths is probably around 1 in 100 births.[14] Mortality rates reached very high levels in maternity institutions in the 1800s, sometimes climbing to 40 percent of birthgiving women. At the beginning of the 1900s, maternal death rates were around 1 in 100 for live births.” There’s no source for the 40% figure and if true it’s likely that it was a highly unusual rate. Anyways, I don’t put too much trust in wikipedia, but the book with the 20% figure is from Oxford University Press, so it’s probably fairly reliable. I’ll wait for Mr. Koehl to provide some source for his figures.
Also, I’m confused as to why we’re bringing up historical figures since this post was about present rates of divorce among people of differing devotion to religion.

pentamom
February 22nd, 2011 | 4:56 pm

And even given the anomalous 40% figure, that percentage of *birthgiving women* is still a LOT less than 1 in 2 *births.* Especially when you consider the infant mortality/stillbirth rate, and that fact that a good percentage of people managed to survive childhood and then die without reproducing anyway — we would have been extinct in a couple of generations if half of all births resulted in maternal death.

Notice also that it’s a 40% rate *in maternity institutions.* Very few children were born in such institutions in the 1900s, and one wonders whether there might be risk factors either associated with or *caused by* such institutions.

C. Ehrlich
February 22nd, 2011 | 5:14 pm

“The statistic is blunt and hides other interesting data. For instance, how many of the 38% came to faith after divorce?”

But also: how many cut back on regular church attendance around the time of their divorce?

C. Ehrlich
February 22nd, 2011 | 5:26 pm

For many young Christians, early marriage is more attractive than either sinful disobedience or prolonged celibacy. But these days–when most youngsters aren’t settled into their life goals and career path until much later in life–an early marriage is particularly difficult to sustain.

So St. Paul might have addressed the situation differently if he sized it up today: instead of “better to marry than to sin,” I expect he might have said: “better to sin a little in one’s youth, than to marry and then divorce!”

ianthis
February 22nd, 2011 | 7:47 pm

St. Paul would never recommend sinning, even to avoid a greater evil.
Divorces don’t occur because people just drift apart. There is something that causes that to happen, and if we really believe that marriage is a sacrament we also have to believe that except in extreme circumstances divorce is a grave disorder in our society.
It is the expectations of society, rather than any inherent problem with Paul’s advice, that undermines marriage. Perhaps if more young Christians married in their early 20s and matured together as a couple instead of buying into today’s individualism and worship of “life goals” it wouldn’t be so hard to sustain a marriage at any stage of life.

C. Ehrlich
February 22nd, 2011 | 9:53 pm

Given the changing circumstances, I half suspect that God, were He to speak to us today, would encourage some of these youthful, unmarried couples to go ahead and fornicate–and to do so with pure joy and the full assurance of God’s approving smile.

That is, following up on my suspicion that it’s the traditional views about fornication that are partly responsible for the higher-than-expected Christian divorce rates, I suspect we’d find sympathy in the heart of God for young couples who, more respectful of the institution of marriage and more aware of their own weaknesses in making life-long commitments, decide not to rush into marriage lest they sin. These do well to look to the spirit, rather than to the letter of the law.

Kate Pitrone
February 22nd, 2011 | 11:03 pm

In the general population, people do not marry. Christians are more likely to get married, although even that is not the absolute we might expect it to be; the younger generation does not have much faith in marriage. Who can blame them? Yet Christians are more likely to marry than live together, which is what much of the population is doing these days. Cohabitation dissolves more easily, although no less comfortably, from what I can observe. Yet if people are not marrying, then and those who do marry after cohabiting are more likely to divorce, Then as a percentage of the population, Christian divorce rates are not so bad. It is sad, but given the stresses of modern life on the institution of marriage, that such a larger percentage of Christians manage to stay married is a testament to faith, or the support of churches, or the understanding of covenant, — something.

Jack Perry
February 22nd, 2011 | 11:53 pm

I suspect we’d find sympathy in the heart of God for young couples who, more respectful of the institution of marriage and more aware of their own weaknesses in making life-long commitments, decide not to rush into marriage lest they sin.

…because, of course, there are no other options.

Jack Perry
February 23rd, 2011 | 12:00 am

“The odds of dying in childbirth typically ran around 50%.”

Wait, is that per birth, or per woman?

I’m somewhat surprised that Stuart didn’t clarify this, but my understanding of the entire sentence (not just the part quoted) is that 50% of women died in childbirth, not that women died in 50% of childbirths.

Pointing to Florence’s “mere” 20% is not a great counterexample, since Florence was a wealthy city during the Renaissance. Go out into the farms and see if women were that lucky.

That said, I confess that I find 50% somewhat extreme. Stuart cites anecdotal evidence, so it’s not inconceivable that both be true. On the other hand, if Florence had 20%, maybe it’s not that far off.

Michael PS
February 23rd, 2011 | 8:13 am

Even before “no-fault” divorce, providing both parties were agreeable, divorce was easy enough.

I well recall one Scottish judge in the sixties, who would dispatch four or five undefended “Hotel cases” in the course of a morning; in these, the husband was alleged to have spent the night in an hotel with a “woman to the pursuer unknown,” the evidence of adultery coming from the receptionist, who booked them in and the chambermaid who, invariably, took them an early morning pot of tea. It was absolutely de rigeur that they be in bed together, when the tray was brought in.

The courts seem to have treated it as an allowable legal fiction, rather than as a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Bill Coffin
February 23rd, 2011 | 11:12 am

And the divorce rate could be cut in half if more people had the advantages/graces offered in courses like those found here:
http://skillswork.org

Karl
February 23rd, 2011 | 5:41 pm

When you and your family, which includes
the children of the marriage, are the victims
of collusion between the Catholic Church,
through its functionaries and your spouse,
resulting in malicious abandonment and the
total destruction which results, you do not
give a DAMN about what the statistics say!

The Church supports adultery and divorce
in everyday practice, period and the Pope
and his bishops and ALL clergy speak
empty words.

No one cares for the real victims but there
is endless “ministry” for the abusers.

May the Catholic Church chastisement
continue unabated and may the clergy,
especially the Pope and the bishops, face
terrible persecution that decimates their
ranks until they act to support the real
victims. May they disappear, almost
completely, if that is what it takes.

pentamom
February 23rd, 2011 | 11:32 pm

Jack, but Stuart also said,

“The odds of dying in childbirth typically ran around 50%. That’s tossing a coin every time a woman gets pregnant.”

The “tossing a coin every time a woman gets pregnant” analogy suggests the woman has a fifty-fifty chance of not seeing out the next ten months, every time she gets pregnant. That’s 50% of all births.

pentamom
February 23rd, 2011 | 11:36 pm

“Pointing to Florence’s “mere” 20% is not a great counterexample, since Florence was a wealthy city during the Renaissance. Go out into the farms and see if women were that lucky.”

Prior to modern medicine, “citified” ideas about childbearing were frequently more dangerous than the kind of common sense practiced by country women and their midwives, and country women frequently healthier. (One could go off on a tangent about how that effect still exists in a different way today, but I’ll resist.) That is to say, I don’t know if the statistics would be better or worse if we left Florence and went out to the farms, but I see no reason to assume they’d be worse.

Stuart Koehl
February 24th, 2011 | 9:20 am

“The “tossing a coin every time a woman gets pregnant” analogy suggests the woman has a fifty-fifty chance of not seeing out the next ten months, every time she gets pregnant. That’s 50% of all births”

That’s correct, and I misspoke. My actual meaning was a woman had about a 50% chance of dying in childbirth during her lifetime (assuming she became pregnant). I should have been more clear, and also specified “childbirth” as meaning any and all complications of pregnancy and delivery.

For that reason, some of the statistics produced by others here seem a bit dubious to me. For instance, saying that the “historical average” is about 1% has no real legs, while in other cases, the definition of childbirth used was “during and immediately after delivery”.

The Simmelweis figures were taken from maternity clinics, and dealt only with pueperal fever (admittedly a “modern” disease, though terms like “milk fever” might also have covered it), so they are a bit limited.

If one adds to pregnancy proper all of the potential hazards of the female reproductive system, it’s clear women tended to die more often during the ages of 20-40 than men. On the other hand, if they made it past the childbearing years, women tended to outlive men, as seems always to have been the case.

The table on Roman life expectancy compiled by researchers at University of Texas (http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html), which is for women, indicates that only some 29.3% of all women died at an age greater than 40 years. Given the level of hygiene and medicine in the Roman Empire, this might be taken as close to the pre-industrial era optimal.

“Prior to modern medicine, “citified” ideas about childbearing were frequently more dangerous than the kind of common sense practiced by country women and their midwives, and country women frequently healthier.”

Urban life until the modern era tended to be more unhealthy in all regards in comparison with rural life. Cities were (to use William McNeill’s term), “macroparasites”, in which the death rate constantly outran live births, thus requiring migration from the hinterland to sustain or grow the urban population (according to the UT study, replacement required a TFR of 2.5 children, which meant roughly 5 live births per woman just to stay even).

The only way in which rural populations were more vulnerable was endemic childhood disease. When populations are too isolated, they do not mix disease pools, hence do not develop immunities to common illnesses. When and if such diseases as measles or small pox enter a virgin population, they tend to burn through it, as the effects on adults without immunity is much worse than in children. The survivors have immunity, but unless their descendants are continually exposed to the disease, they will lack immunity, and the cycle will repeat itself.

None of which affects the general drift of my argument that one reason there were fewer divorces is people simply died younger and more frequently.

Nobody has addressed my other argument, which is in the absence of accessible divorce, they chose other ways of dealing with broken marriages, including abandonment, cohabitation, bigamy and the old French standby, the menage a trois.

No Blog is an Island – 2.25.11 « Nate Navigates the Bible
February 25th, 2011 | 9:53 am

[...] Joe Carter looks at new research showing that the oft-cited statistic of Christians and nonbelievers divorcing at the same rate is a myth.  This is something I’ve always suspected and attributed to the false self-identification as Christian of many respondents. [...]

American Abroad
March 7th, 2011 | 12:57 pm

Although it would seem to be true that religious followers have a lower divorce rate than non-religious couples, I am not certain this is statistically significant. I don’t know the source of the statistical data that the author uses as a reference for basing the claims. I think it’s a little more complex than just Christians (or religious followers) versus others. There are probably other variables involved. For example, divorce in Thailand (where I currently live) occurs at a much lower rate than most western countries. The divorce rates here are increasing for various reasons, mostly due to an increase in women into the workforce. Though rates are on the rise, they remain much lower than in America or the west. There are many cultural factors involved with divorce. So it would make more sense if the author were to eliminate various forms of bias prior to defending the argument.