Christian author and social researcher Shonti Feldhahn debunks the urban myth that America’s divorce rate is 50 percent.
“When I started looking at the Census Bureau tables and the CDC tables and the Vital Statistics Bureau tables, that’s when I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this doesn’t fit the story at all,'” Feldhahn said. . cloves In a recent interview.
Although she herself believed this myth at one time, she ended up doing eight years of extensive research on the topic. CBN News I will report it.
“The reason it took eight years is because it’s insanely complicated,” she pointed out. “There is no one correct number.”
“Why? It depends on whether the divorce rate is the proportion of people who will get divorced in the future, etc. Or is it the number of people who are already divorced?”
Based on his research, Feldhahn compiled it all into a book. Good news about marriage: Debunking discouraging myths about marriage and divorce.
“71% of people are still married to their first spouse, and the remaining 29% are not true either, because that includes all those who have been married for 50 years and whose spouse has died. “Because there is,” she explained.
Regarding the death of a spouse, Feldhahn claimed that the actual divorce rate does not exceed 25 percent.
“It used to be that a 50 percent future divorce rate was actually a reasonable prediction,” she says. “In 1972, no-fault divorce was brought into U.S. courts, and that led to an explosion in divorces. Demographers at the time were very worried and said, ‘Oh my God, if this trend continues. “One day the divorce rate will reach 50 percent.”
“But just a few years later, in 1980, divorce rates began to trend downward,” Feldman explained. “We never got close to the 50 percent prediction…and that’s what hasn’t been corrected in public opinion.”
According to statistics compiled by forbesEvery year, more people get married than divorce.
In 2021, a total of 689,308 marriages ended in divorce in 45 U.S. states. In the same year, 1,985,072 couples married, making the country’s marriage rate 6 couples per 1,000 people.
Ferdan also pointed out that the age of couples getting married plays a role in divorce rates.
“People are getting married a little bit older, and when they get married very young, those people are at higher risk for divorce rates,” she told KLOVE.
For example, couples who marry after age 25 are 50% less likely to divorce than couples who marry at age 20.
Mr. Feldhahn also debunked the myth that divorce rates are higher for people who remarry after divorce or the death of a spouse.
“My senior researcher, Tully Whitehead, and I spent three years finding the research behind that number,” she explained. “We did a very thorough investigation. We looked at all the different quotes, news reports, websites, and they all traced back to her three sources that don’t exist.”
In her book, Feldhahn said that people who are active in the church have a 27 to 50 percent lower divorce rate than people who don’t go to church. In a December 2022 interview, she told CBN News that she wants people to know the truth about marriage and share it.
“We need to change the paradigm of how we talk about marriage. We need to shift the paradigm from how marriages are in trouble and all these discouraging things to, “No, wait, most marriages are strong and last a lifetime.” “We need to change the narrative to ‘I’m happy,'” she said. CBN News. “That makes all the difference for a couple to be able to say, ‘Look, most people can get through this, we can get through this.’
Image credit: © Getty Images/mofles
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributor to Christian Headlines and host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast dedicated to sound doctrine and Biblical truth. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Alliance Theological Seminary.
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