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November 01, 2006
Divorce Rates
Gotta love economists:
I constructed a dummy variable indicating whether a person is now, or ever was, divorced. I then regressed this on the GSS's 3-point Biblical literalism scale. With no control variables, there is no visible connection between the two. Controlling for church attendance, Biblical literalists actually look more likely to divorce. (Church attendance works as expected - more church, less divorce). Controlling for education (and any other demographics you might care to use), the effect of Biblical literalism is statistically insignificant, but still has the wrong sign (i.e., Biblical literalists are a tiny bit more likely to divorce).
And, as all coastal elites know, Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. Indeed, blue states generally have lower divorce rates. That's likely an effect of income and education, not social mores or virtue. And it's good to hear that fundamentalism doesn't interfere with freedom: Many marriages are bad, and society's expectations shouldn't trap individuals in them.
November 1, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
I think I read somewhere (and I could be wrong, so don't quote me on this) that evangelicals tend to marry younger than non-evangelicals. Since those who marry young are somewhat more likely to divorce, that would seem to produce a force for divorce in the evangelical community.
Posted by: Zzedar | Nov 1, 2006 11:42:01 AM
I agree.
Differing cultures marry at different ages.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Nov 1, 2006 11:49:13 AM
"evangelicals tend to marry younger than non-evangelicals"
Have to be married to get teh sex!
Posted by: CParis | Nov 1, 2006 12:02:14 PM
The other problem with this is that it doesn't factor in if one became a biblical literalist after a divorce, or became one during a marriage, prompting a divorce from a non-believer.
A friend of fundie background says that a common pattern is go to church as a kid, leave to go to college and get married. Go through bad marriage. Divorce and find God. Remarry a fundie and raise your kids really strict. These kids then flee as soon as they are old enough...
Posted by: NotThatMo | Nov 1, 2006 12:09:40 PM
I see everyone else has made my point already. Except I didn't think of NotThatMo's point. Good point. I assume that much of the family values fanatacism is driven by women who have been abandoned by the father's of their children and take out their anger on innocent gays etc.
It is reasonably likely that biblical literalism makes people marry in haste and divorce as a result. There are many ways this can happen and not all can be included in a regression.
Literalists marry younger (can look at divorce conditional on age of bride a groom at marriage).
Literalists are less likely to use effective contraception and more likely to get pregnant by accident. Then they are less likely to abort or accept single parenthood. This is hard to measure (although births including those less than 9 months after marriage are recorded in some data bases).
Finally literalists are more likely to feel the need to marry someone if they have sex with that person (or even before having sex with that person which I'm sure does happen even in 2006). I don't see any way to control for this given existing data, nor any way to collect accurate data on sexual activity of biblical literalists and non literalists which is not distorted by different rates of refusal to respond and different rates of lying. Hey maybe I am assuming that the literalists are less willing to bear false witness to social scientists I didn't write that they are liars (I do think that but I didn't write it until now)
More haste in marriage, more bad marriages, more divorce. Makes sense to me.
Posted by: Robert Waldmann | Nov 1, 2006 12:24:01 PM
What it seems to suggest (although by no means conclusively) is that biblical literalism is even worse news for your interpersonal cognitive skills than previously suspected. If it leads to a an equal or higher divorce rate even after all of the indoctrination about marriage being forever, then golly there are a lot of bad fundie marriages out there.
Of course, one of the things that isn't in here is the concordance between marriage partners on literalism (or for that matter a good definition of same). I can imagine situations in which one partner is not quite as bugf*** literalist as the other, but manages at least initially to imagine that that won't be an unconquerable obstacle.
Posted by: paul | Nov 1, 2006 12:35:56 PM
Why should this surprise us? They're all comfortable with divorce. They've been divorced from reality for years.
Seriously -- why do we let evangelicals off the hook so easily? Their higher divorce rates happen simply because they marry younger?
Isn't it also possible that evangelical Christians are also less flexible in their thinking? And more prone to think in terms of "one right way" to do things. In other words, if they are convinced of their own rightness, their spouse, by definition, must be wrong?
Let's not forget that red-staters also have children at a younger age, so they're creating that many more broken families. Maybe, as Ezra suggests, getting out of bad marriages is always a good thing for the individual -- unless that individual is a child. For the kids, it's almost never a good thing.
It's ironic that even in this discussion about the hypocrisy of the right, so many commenters here are eager to look at things "fairly," finding logical cultural reasons for the statistical differences. This is the kind of flexible, mature thinking that helps save marriages.
Do you think, for a second, that if the statistics were reversed, and Mass. had the highest divorce rate, that the Right would cut us any such slack?
Hell no. To them, it would be proof that we are all evil.
Posted by: Jason M | Nov 1, 2006 1:47:19 PM
I know of at least two marriages where one partner was not sufficiently fundamentalist for the other partner, and so they divorced. But that's just an anecdote, not a data point.
Posted by: maurinsky | Nov 1, 2006 2:30:43 PM
The 'social acceptance' of divorce has changed dramatically since, say the 1950's (when my parents were divorced). In those days divorce was hidden and whispered about.
So, while we speculate on biblical literalists and marriage/divorce, it seems like a good thing to throw into the discussion the possibility/probablity that the places where biblical literalism thrives are mostly in the south, and rural or semi-rural midwest/great plains. It is likely that these areas are relatively untouched by the changes in social attitudes about divorce, sex, marriage, child rearing, etc., that have characterized the northeast, mid-atlantic, and larger cities nearly everywhere.
They are just behind the times in this marriage/divorce area as well as many other areas of life. You could say the same thing about acceptance of racially mixed marriages, gay/lesbian orientation, sex before marriage, race prejudice, acceptance of diversity, etc.
If this is true, and I think it is, the 'times they will be a changin'..... [maybe they already are if the changes in voting behavior being guessed at are really true.]
Bottom line: the strongest arguments for marriage persistence between two people is to provide a stable family life for raising children, and the bond of mutual support that those married ought to owe one another. However, aside from arguing about child custody and child support, when the magic chemistry of marriage bonds is broken, rarely do the adults do the adult things needed to protect their children from the disruption causes by divorce. So maybe the arguments for marriage are all just rationalizations for legalized, tax supported, hooking up?
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Nov 1, 2006 2:31:51 PM
"Controlling for church attendance, Biblical literalists actually look more likely to divorce."
Why on earth should you "control" for church attendance? Belief in biblical inerrancy is positively associated with church attendence. It is also positively associated with low divorce rates. If you "control" for church attendance, you get the divorce rate among self-professed believers in biblical inerrancy who nonetheless don't go to church any more frequently than do members of the general public. What is the imporance of that statistic?
Posted by: JR | Nov 1, 2006 3:21:19 PM
Why should this surprise us? They're all comfortable with divorce. They've been divorced from reality for years.
Very, very funny.
Belief in biblical inerrancy is positively associated with church attendence. It is also positively associated with low divorce rates.
No, it isn't, not according to the study linked in the post or any other recent study on the issue. On another note, greater church attendance does not equal lower divorce.
Anyway, the number of people who believe the "Bible is literally true" while not attending church weekly or even much at all is certainly greater than most Southern Baptist preachers would like to believe.
Posted by: Stephen | Nov 1, 2006 3:37:39 PM
Controlling for alcohol consumption, people who hang out all day in bars are no less healthy than average.
Posted by: ostap | Nov 1, 2006 3:47:11 PM
If you "control" for church attendance, you get the divorce rate among self-professed believers in biblical inerrancy who nonetheless don't go to church any more frequently than do members of the general public. What is the imporance of that statistic?
Good point. That must eliminate at least half. These stats are hard to interpret for a bunch of reasons.
On another note, greater church attendance does not equal lower divorce.
The quote in Ezra's post seems to say it does. Not sure I've heard it elsewhere lately, though. It's very true here in Utah, I know, but Utah is unusual.
Posted by: Sanpete | Nov 1, 2006 6:16:52 PM
If you look at the map, the Bible Belt is also the divorce and murder belt. Scientific American had a good set of maps showing this a few years back. It probably has more to do with Southern cultural values than with religion in that the entire package includes old time Bible thumping, frequent divorces and honor killing.
Posted by: Kaleberg | Nov 1, 2006 7:46:22 PM
It probably has more to do with Southern cultural values than with religion in that the entire package includes old time Bible thumping, frequent divorces and honor killing.
This is a bullshit statement. A spewing of hate without any evidence whatsoever. So you hate the South. Why not just stand up and say that instead of making shit up?
Posted by: Fred Jones | Nov 1, 2006 8:30:34 PM
Biblical literalist divorce more frequently becasue that is God's plan for them.
Posted by: simple answer | Nov 2, 2006 7:03:19 AM
"And it's good to hear that fundamentalism doesn't interfere with freedom: Many marriages are bad, and society's expectations shouldn't trap individuals in them."
Great point, Ezra. Before I filed for my divorce, like a good Boy Scout I got prepared, did my research. Boy, was I glad I was doing it in Michigan and not North Carolina. Thanks to the family values crowd, NC has about the highest barriers to divorce in the country. A couple has to legally separate for a year before they can even file for divorce, and then it takes a year or more to wind through the courts depending on how complex the case is. The intent in making the barriers high is ostensibly to encourage the couple to reconcile, but in real life, it gave the primary breadwinner (usually the husband) a year to figure out how to hide his income and assets.
Didn't Prohibition teach us that irrational laws only make things worse?
Posted by: Rick | Nov 2, 2006 10:18:41 AM
And it's good to hear that fundamentalism doesn't interfere with freedom: Many marriages are bad, and society's expectations shouldn't trap individuals in them.
I wouldn't discount the idea that fundamentalism doesn't hurt freedom, at least if you mean the freedom to leave bad marriages. Unless we assume that all fundies are hypocrites, surely some stay in bad marriages because divorce is a sin. Which means that they might actually have a much higher rate of unhappy marriages than in subcultures where people are encouraged to terminate unhappy marriages.
Posted by: Patsy | Nov 2, 2006 12:33:55 PM
Hi All,
This is raji.
This site deals with the divorce and it's related to the divorce rates.
divorce society
Posted by: raji | Mar 23, 2007 3:15:09 PM
From a Christian POV, Antigone, marriage is for life. A marriage is not one of unequals, but of equals who voluntarily choose live and love together; to serve God together; and, to a large extent, to sacrifice their interests for the other person. This is why I am convicted that only by God's grace can a marriage survive. We are too naturally selfish, and, on top of that, there are too many things in this world that will work to tear a marriage apart. As someone who got married only 11 months ago, I am still very much learning how to love my wife.And I hope I will never think about divorce:)
Posted by: steven davies | Aug 3, 2007 4:10:04 AM
izzit matter with the premarital sex?
Posted by: chris gonxhalez | Aug 21, 2007 1:10:14 AM
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