Break-up in Relationship and Divorce

Women are more likely than men to initiate divorces, but women and men are just as likely to end non-marital relationships, according to a new study.

"The breakups of non-marital heterosexual relationships in the U.S. are quite gender neutral and fairly egalitarian," said study author Michael Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University. "This was a surprise because the only prior research that had been done on who wanted the breakup was research on marital divorces."

Rosenfeld's analysis relies on data from the 2009-2015 waves of the nationally representative How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey. He considers 2,262 adults, ages 19 to 94, who had opposite sex partners in 2009. By 2015, 371 of these people had broken up or gotten divorced.

As part of his analysis, Rosenfeld found that women initiated 69 percent of all divorces, compared to 31 percent for men. In contrast, there was not a statistically significant difference between the percentage of breakups initiated by unmarried women and men, regardless of whether they had been cohabitating with their partners.

Social scientists have previously argued that women initiate most divorces because they are more sensitive to relationship difficulties. Rosenfeld argues that were this true, women would initiate the breakup of both marriages and non-marital relationships at equal rates.

"Women seem to have a predominant role in initiating divorces in the U.S. as far back as there is data from a variety of sources, back to the 1940s," Rosenfeld said. "I assumed, and I think other scholars assumed, that women's role in breakups was an essential attribute of heterosexual relationships, but it turns out that women's role in initiating breakups is unique to heterosexual marriage."

Perhaps women were more likely to initiate divorces because, as Rosenfeld found, married women reported lower levels of relationship quality than married men. In contrast, women and men in non-marital relationships reported equal levels of relationship quality.

Rosenfeld said his results support the feminist assertion that some women experience heterosexual marriage as oppressive or uncomfortable.

"I think that marriage as an institution has been a little bit slow to catch up with expectations for gender equality," Rosenfeld said. "Wives still take their husbands' surnames, and are sometimes pressured to do so. Husbands still expect their wives to do the bulk of the housework and the bulk of the childcare. On the other hand, I think that non-marital relationships lack the historical baggage and expectations of marriage, which makes the non-marital relationships more flexible and therefore more adaptable to modern expectations, including women's expectations for more gender equality."




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Comments (13)

LoL! Yeah you should expeckt some expertise on the matter around here...laugh cool wine
Hmmmmm...maybe those women who initiated divorce found out that their husband had an extra-marital affair?? grin
Sure Viking, someone will cut and paste the expertise.laugh
The article states that in non-marital relationships, women reported the same level of relationship quality as men. However, in the marriage relationship, women reported lower levels of relationship quality than men.

What factor(s) do you think are responsible for this change in the women's report?

DC has hinted that the husband may have had an extra-marital affair.

Are there any other possible factors involved?

Ladies (and men), Suggestions welcome!
I would be curious as to know which gender takes the vows of marriage more seriously....if there is a way of getting an honest answer to that.
Why Johnny, the ladies of course!!! grin
rolling on the floor laughing DC....hey, I am just saying.

It would add up and make sense for the conclusion of the survey.
You bet! laugh
The longer any relationship goes on for the more likely it is for a woman to end things. And marriages are usually longer relationships. What an oversight for the researchers to make, it's almost as if they had a desired-outcome in mind before they began the study.

Anyway, the liability of men is getting them to commit and settle down in the first place - which is why they're more responsible for break-ups in the early years and settle in the later years when commitment and love become a habit. And the liability of woman is to leave a man when she's got him exactly where she thinks she wants him(hence why they initiate more divorce AND break up long-term unmarried relationships more often).
I think these researchers should be shot for making such glaring and deliberate omissions with an agenda in mind. To waste money on bent quacks and their so-called research in a time of hardship and difficulty is a crime against society.
A seven year old relationship whether a marriage or not is more likely to be ended by the woman. The fact that more seven year old relationships are marriages, and therefore women end more of them, is not saying that women have a problem with marriage but that women have a problem with seven year long relationships.

If a seven year marriage does slightly increase the risk of her ending things then it is because she's got him right where she thinks she wants him. Make no mistake a man who doesn't want to marry and instead marshalls a woman into foregoing her wedding day(when it boils down to it it's usually him who doesn't want to marry)already has a power over her. The kind of power which means she doesn't want to leave.

Basically put: more hubby men are yes men than longterm lover men are, and women don't like yes men. They tend only to like yes men up until a few weeks before the youngest child is out of nappies(often about 7 years).
I would like to see the break down by ages. I would expect fertility or lack of, is the underlying common denominator. Women become mentally impaired when they no longer have a use for the wee wee. Causes all kind of delusions about their happiness.
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socrates44

San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago

I identify with the following words of Socrates:
“Know thyself”.
“The unexamined life is not worth living”.

I am a person who seek depth in life and living. This has been an overwhelming desire in me even since childhood. It is identified with a [read more]