In in her article, "The Gray Divorces," Susan Gregory Thomas attempts to explain "why baby boomers are breaking up late in life like no generation before." She writes:
Though overall national divorce rates have declined since spiking in the 1980s, "gray divorce" has risen to its highest level on record, according to Prof. Brown. In 1990, only one in 10 people who got divorced was 50 or older; by 2009, the number was roughly one in four. More than 600,000 people ages 50 and older got divorced in 2009.
And this is interesting:
What's more, a 2004 national survey conducted by AARP found that women are the ones initiating most of these breakups. Among divorces by people ages 40-69, women reported seeking the split 66% of the time. And cheating doesn't appear to be the driving force in gray divorce. The same AARP survey found that 27% of divorcés cited infidelity as one of their top three reasons for seeking a divorce—which is not out of line with estimates of infidelity as a factor in divorce in the general population.
So, what is going on? According to Thomas,
"The trend defies any simple explanation, but it springs at least in part from boomers' status as the first generation to enter into marriage with goals largely focused on self-fulfillment. As they look around their empty nests and toward decades more of healthy life, they are increasingly deciding that they've done their parental duty and now want out. . .
I found it interesting to read of "three successive views" of American marriages:
First, there was the "institutional" phase, in the decades before World War II, when marriage was seen largely as an economic union.
This was succeeded in the 1950s and '60s by the "companionate" phase, in which a successful marriage was defined by the degree to which each spouse could fulfill his or her role. Husbands were measured by their prowess as providers and wives by their skills in homemaking and motherhood.
In the 1970s, the boomers initiated what Prof. Brown calls the "individualized" phase, with an emphasis on the satisfaction of personal needs. "Individualized marriage is more egocentric... Before the 1970s, no one would have thought to separate out the self as being distinct from the roles of b good wife and mother."
The following statistic may be particularly significant:
For many boomers, it is not their first marital split. Fifty-three percent of the people over 50 now getting divorced have done so at least once before.
That, I think, is the key. If a person has divorced once before, the chances are much greater that person will divorce again. Having been divorced once before doubles the risk for those ages 50 to 64. For those 65 and up, the risk factor quadruples. Read the whole article . . .