A Christian author and social researcher has dismissed claims that more than half of all American marriages end in divorce as a “myth and urban legend.” Shaunti Feldhahn says the true divorce rate is much lower and always has been.
For eight years she has extensively researched the public perception of the 50% claim about US divorces and tried to find its original source. She found no evidence to back-up the mistaken belief. “When I started looking at the Census Bureau tables and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tables and the Bureau of Vital Statistics – that’s when I was like: Wait a minute this does not match the narrative at all,” Ms. Feldhahn explained.
The author then took all of her findings and organised them into a book titled: The Good News About Marriage: Debunking Discouraging Myths About Marriage And Divorce. “71% of people are still married to their first spouse,” she told Christian radio network K-LOVE. After taking into consideration spouses who had died during a marriage, Ms. Feldhahn is confident that the true divorce rate is currently no greater than 25%.
She admitted that during the 1970s, a 50% divorce rate was a reasonable projection when no-fault divorce entered the US courts, leading to an explosion of divorces. But by the 1980s, the divorce rate began to trend down. “We never got close to hitting the 50% projection and that has not been corrected in the public opinion,” according to Ms. Feldhahn.
The author/researcher found that far more people get married over the course of each year than get divorced. She also noted that people are getting married at slightly older ages. She noted that: Those who get married very young have a higher divorce rate risk and the risk of divorce drops for couples who marry after age 25. Those who marry at 25 are 50% less likely to divorce when compared to couples who tied the knot at 20.”
Ms. Feldhahn also rejected claims that those who remarried following a divorce or the death of a spouse had a much higher risk of divorce — possibly two out of three remarriages. She concluded that was “pure urban myth” after tracing back the claims to sources that don’t exist.
Her book also reveals that the divorce rate among those active in their church is 27% to 50% lower than among non-churchgoers. The author told CBN News: “We need to change the paradigm of how we talk about marriage. From marriage being in trouble and all this discouraging stuff to saying, ‘No, wait. Most marriages are strong and happy for a lifetime.”
That also appears to be the case in Australia where the overall divorce rate has been estimated at around half of all marriages. An often quoted statistic is that based on the 2016 Census,12% of the population is either separated or divorced, compared to just six percent of the church population based on the 2016 National Church Life Survey (NCLS), which also reported 65% of the church population as married compared to 48% of the general population.
