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7 - The Intergenerational Transmission of Couplelnstability
- from Part III - Partnership Behavior
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- By E. Mavis Hetherington, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, U.S.A., Anne Mitchell Elmore, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, U.S.A.
- Edited by P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Northwestern University, Illinois, Kathleen Kiernan, London School of Economics and Political Science, Ruth J. Friedman
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- Book:
- Human Development across Lives and Generations
- Published online:
- 12 October 2018
- Print publication:
- 02 August 2004, pp 171-203
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- Chapter
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Summary
There is considerable research evidence that offspring of divorced parents are at higher risk for marital instability than those from nondivorced parents. This chapter examines factors and processes that contribute to or protect against the intergenerational transmission of divorce. Data from the Virginia Longitudinal Study of Divorce and Remarriage are used to examine the contribution of six sets of risk factors to marital instability. These indude socioeconomic risk, personality risk, parenting risk, problem solving and interactional skills risk, commitment risk, and mate selection risk. The association of family conflict and divorce with different types of marriages and the protection against the intergenerational transmission of marital instability offered by a supportive spouse from a stable family background are also examined.
Introduction
Marriage has become a more optional, less permanent institution in most western industrialized nations, as patterns of sexuality, childbearing, cohabitation, and marriage have become less predictable and closely linked. Many parents and children are going through multiple changes and rearrangements in intimate relations and in family life that affect their life experiences, opportunities, adjustment, and well being. In the United States the so-called breakdown of the family and increase in the divorce rate and single parent families has been decried by the media, politicians, religious groups, and conservative family theorists. This has led to social policies that attempt to preserve and promote marriage.
Although the divorce rate in the United States began to decline after 1980 after more than doubling over the course of the previous three decades, demographers predict that over 45% of American marriages will end in divorce (Teachman, Tedrow, & Crowder, 2000; U.S. Census Bureau, 1998). Most researchers have taken a pathogenic view of divorce and have focused on the Stresses and adverse outcomes associated with marital breakup. However, it should also be recognized that it can offer an escape from an unhappy, abusive, conflictual, or demeaning marriage and the opportunity to build new, more harmonious, fulfilling relationships, and increased personal growth and individuation.
The Adjustment of Offspring from Divorced Families
In order to understand the adjustment of parents and children to marital transitions and family reorganizations, they have to be examined over time.
8 - Risk and Resilience in Children Coping with Their Parents' Divorce and Remarriage
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- By E. Mavis Hetherington, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, Anne Mitchell Elmore, Westat Inc., Rockville, MD
- Edited by Suniya S. Luthar, Columbia University, New York
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- Book:
- Resilience and Vulnerability
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 05 May 2003, pp 182-212
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- Chapter
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Summary
In the past 50 years in the United States, marriage has become a more optional, less permanent institution. Marriage is being delayed, rates of marital formation are decreasing, and divorce, births to single mothers, and cohabitation have increased. The divorce rate has more than doubled since 1950, and although in the past two decades it has declined modestly and stabilized, still about 45% of contemporary marriages are expected to fail (Teachman, Tedrow, & Crowder, 2000; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998). As the divorce rate increased in the 1970s, the remarriage rate for women began to decline. About 65% of women and 75% of men now remarry. However, divorces occur more rapidly and frequently in remarriages, especially in those involving stepchildren (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Tzeng & Mare, 1995).
The general long-term pattern of a rising divorce rate over the past 50 years and a decreasing remarriage rate starting in the 1980s holds for non-Hispanic whites, African Americans, and Hispanic whites, but the absolute levels differ for the three groups. Compared to non-Hispanic and Hispanic whites, African Americans wait longer and are less likely to marry and also are more likely to separate and divorce, to remain separated without a divorce, and less likely to remarry (Teachman et al., 2000).
As parents move in and out of intimate relationships, their children are exposed to the changes, challenges, and stresses associated with multiple family transitions.
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