Good news for families, bad news for divorce lawyers

Jan 3, 2019 by

by Harry Benson, The Conservative Woman:

TRADITIONALLY, January has seen a spike in the number of couples deciding to end their marriages following a stressful festive period. However, research released by the Marriage Foundation this week suggests that this month could be quieter for divorce lawyers than expected. Teenage years may have a reputation for being difficult and volatile, but an increasing number of parents are staying married long enough to weather these storms together. This is really good news for 2019.

One of the issues we’ve consistently addressed at Marriage Foundation is the scale of family breakdown. A few years ago, we started by analysing data from 2010 in a big national survey called Understanding Society (USoc). From this, we were able to work out that 45 per cent of all teens were not living with both natural parents. I still think this is one of the most shocking statistics we’ve produced.

We’ve tended to assume that this figure would keep getting worse until society addressed the trend away from relatively stable marriage and toward relatively unstable cohabitation. The argument was that as more and more couples embraced cohabitation rather than marriage, more and more couples would split up.

But research also shows that even though fewer couples marry, those who do marry have been doing better and better. Divorce rates in the early years of marriage have been falling steadily over the past twenty years or so.

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