NAD Adventist Single Adult Ministries : Forum

In some areas high divorce rates have fallen while in others they have increased. Here is an short item written by Judith Wallerstein from the book Growing Your Single Adult Ministry It was published in 1993. So............was she accurate?

She was asked: "Do you believe that the next decade in America will see an increase or decreate in the divorce rate?"

Her response - "I think there is both good and bad news. The good news is that it seems that one of the immediate effects of my book - as well as the ongoing ripple effect - is that there may be more thought given before people rush out to get a divorce. Many therapists are now telling me that people are coming in and standing on the threshold longer, hesitating to go through with a divorce. People are asking, "What is it going to mean to my children?" they appear ot be giving the issues and ramifications of divorce more serious thought.

There's no more of the creative divorce of the seventies. That's passe. In the seventies the attitude was, "Everyone can do it. It's okay. Come on in, the water's fine!" It's too early to say if this more cautious approach will continue, but at least for now that seems to be happening.

The bad news, on the other hand, is that we have an entire generation of kids growing up in divorced homes. The divorce rate, at least in the past, has tended to be higher for usch children once they become married adults. So we could potentially see a long-term climbing divorce rate in this country."

DARLENE

WELL it is good that people are thinking longer and
what the out come will be about getting a a divorice.

but more and more people in there late 20's seem to
be getting a divorice it seem.

just like the book says....

dgrimm60

I've been searching the Internet for divorce statistics and the most recent ones are 2000. Seems that divorce at the moment is quite static; neither going up nor down. I did come across an interesting article on Christianity Today which is enlightening:

Don't Believe the Divorce Statistics

Why your marriage has better than a 50/50 chance
-by Jim Killam

"Half of all marriages end in divorce. We know this to be true because people tell us. The media report it. Your pastor might preach it. Your friends talk about it. As one expert puts it, the statistic has become "part of American folklore."

But it's a lie. Repeat after me: Fifty percent of all marriages do not end in divorce.

If it's untrue, why won't that flawed statistic go away? Because, truth be told, no one can come up with the right statistic.

Recent research suggests that one marriage in four is closer to the true divorce rate. The 50-percent myth originated a couple of decades ago when someone looked at marriage and divorce numbers reported by the National Center for Health Statistics. The number of divorces in one year was precisely half the number of marriages. Voila! Half of all marriages end in divorce. Right? Nope.

.............

Barna's research may be the best recent attempt at finding the true divorce rate in America. His group surveyed 3,142 randomly selected adults and found that 24 percent of adults who have been married also have been divorced. The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 1 to 2 percent.

The wording here is important: "adults who have been married." Don't fall prey to well-meaning statisticians who go to the other extreme and say the divorce rate is less than 10 percent. Their answer is based on the Statistical Abstract of the United States, which shows the divorce rate as 4.7 people per thousand. That's per thousand adults in general—married, divorced, never married and widowed. So the figure doesn't tell you anything.

Closer to the mark, but still not all that helpful, is a National Center for Health Statistics figure showing 20.7 divorces per 1,000 married women. Again, that can be an apples-to-oranges comparison because the statistic includes all women who have ever been married—including those who are currently widowed or divorced.

"These figures aren't percentages," Richert cautions. "People get confused and say, 'Oh, this is a lot lower than 50 percent.'"

Since this article is copyrighted....you can go to the following link to finish reading it.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/mp/7m2/7m2046.html