This paper has been commissioned by The Vanier Institute of the Family as a

contribution to discussion and as a source for the development of The Vanier

Institute of the Family's perspective on divorce in Canada.

occasional papers authored by leading Canadian experts in

the field of family studies.

The Vanier Institute of the Family was established in 1965 under the patronage of Their

Excellencies Governor General Georges P. Vanier and Madame Pauline Vanier. It is a national

voluntary organization dedicated to promoting the well-being of Canada's families through

research, publications, public education and advocacy. The Institute regularly works with

businesses, legislators, policy-makers and program specialists, researchers, educators, family

service professionals, the media and members of the general public.

Dr. Anne-Marie Ambert has been a professor at the Department of Sociology, York University

She has done extensive research in the areas of divorce and remarriage, poverty, and various

(www.arts.yorku.ca/soci/ambert).

Is it true that "one out of every two marriages breaks up"? ................................................1

How do we measure divorce? .............................................................................................2

So why the misunderstanding? ...........................................................................................3

But is this the entire story? ..................................................................................................4

Are divorce rates going up or down? ..................................................................................5

How do Canadian rates compare with others? ....................................................................6

How many people divorce many times? .............................................................................7

After how many years of marriage do couples divorce? .....................................................7

How old are people at divorce? ..........................................................................................8

How many children are involved in divorce cases? ............................................................8

What about predictions that 40 to 50% of children will experience the divorce of

their parents? .......................................................................................................................8

Who gets child custody? .....................................................................................................9

How common is remarriage? ............................................................................................10

How many families with dependent children are stepfamilies? ........................................10

Are remarriages as stable as first marriages? ....................................................................10

How frequent is cohabitation? ..........................................................................................11

How many children are involved in cohabiting families? ................................................12

Are cohabitations as stable as marriages? .........................................................................12

Do couples who cohabit before marriage divorce less than others? .................................13

How is it that cohabitation before marriage does not prevent divorce? ............................13

What causes divorce? ........................................................................................................14

Consequences of divorce ..................................................................................................17

Divorce causes poverty .....................................................................................................17

Increased risk of problems for children of divorced parents .............................................19

There are, however, several cautions that are advised in interpreting the above

information. .......................................................................................................................20

There are six main explanations for children's negative outcomes following a

parental divorce. ................................................................................................................21

Are there differences by age and sex to children's adjustment to divorce? .......................24

Does parental remarriage help children? ..........................................................................25

What are the consequences of divorce for adults? ............................................................26

who were marrying for the first time and others who were remarrying, generally after a divorce. For instance, in 1998, 22% of the brides and grooms were remarrying following a divorce and 33% of all marriages included at least one spouse who had been previously married. It means that the probability of divorcing for a first marriage is lower.

The most commonly used method to measure divorce internationally is the rate for every 1,000 or 100,000 people in the population. In 2000, this rate in Canada was 2.2 per 1,000 people in the population. This method of calculation allows us to say that there are more or fewer divorces in any year per 1,000 or 100,000 population. Holding the denominator constant allows us to see fluctuations in the annual rates. But there are two main problems with this measure. 

First, this measure is sensitive to a population's age distribution. For instance, as seniors become proportionately more numerous, the number of divorces goes down, thus lowering the overall divorce rate even though younger people might still be divorcing at a high rate. The second problem is that, when we calculate divorces per 100,000 population, children are included as well as single persons. All of these people reduce the divorce rate because they can't divorce: they are not even married!

A more realistic method is to focus on those who are eligible to divorce, namely legally married couples, which gives us a divorce rate per 1,000 or 100,000 married couples. Of course, as you see in Table 1, this method produces higher rates of divorce because the denominator is not diluted and includes only people at risk of divorcing, that is, married couples. This approach shows that in:

1981, there were 1,180 divorces per 100,000 married couples, or a rate of 1.2%;

1987, there were 1,585 divorces per 100,000 married couples, or a rate of 1.6%;

1995, there were 1,222 divorces per 100,000 married couples, or a rate of 1.2%.

People are also led to believe that one out of two marriages ends in divorce because the following simplistic way of measuring divorce is often used: the number of divorces in a year is calculated over the number of marriages that have taken place during this same year. If the number of marriages goes down, as it has in the past decade, it only makes sense that, even if the number of divorces remains the same, the proportion of divorces will increase. As you can see, this is a very misleading way of calculating divorce.

No. Several points need to be emphasized.

1. Predictions are just that: predictions. They are made on the basis of yearly trends. Unfortunately, the "yearly" is often forgotten in heated discussions! Thus, predictions have to be constantly revised to fit new realities.

However, including all cohabitations under the rubric of conjugal relations may be misleading and so would be equating their break up with divorce. Indeed, many cohabitations last a few months at best and merely constitute a "glorified" dating period. Including cohabitations of two years or more might be more appropriate. This is an issue, which requires more thought and research.

4. Finally, an unknown number of couples separate but never divorce. This type of conjugal dissolution may be as real as a divorce, yet it does not appear in divorce statistics.

So, when caveats 3 and 4 are put together, it is certainly true that at least one out of every two unions ends in dissolution. And the percentage may become even higher if young people or younger cohorts continue to enter into cohabitation as a first union. But unions are not necessarily the equivalent of marriages.

They have gone down substantially during the 1990s. In Table 1, Statistics Canada presents us with the following rates of divorce throughout the years:

1921 558 6.4 N/A

1941 2,462 21.4 N/A

1961 6,563 36.0 N/A

1968* 11,343 54.8 N/A

1969 26,093 124.2 N/A

1981 67,671 271.8 1,174.4

1985** 61,980 253.6 1,103.3

1986 78,304 298.8 1,301.6

1987*** 96,200 362.3 1,585.5

1990 80,998 295.8 1,311.5

1995 77,636 262.2 1,221.9

1997 67,408 224.8 N/A

2000 70,292 228.4 N/A

Divorce has greatly increased since 1968 when the Divorce Laws entered into effect; in fact, we

have experienced a five-fold increase from 1968 to 1995. Divorce rates peaked in 1987 in Canada and in 1981 in the U.S. and have since stabilized at lower levels. Whether they will go up or down in the future largely depends on demographic factors and on people's lifestyle as well as values. 

U.S. 4.3

Cuba 3.7

U.K. 3.1

France 2.7

Canada 2.6

Sweden 2.2

Germany 2.0

Portugal 1.4

Spain 0.7

Italy 0.5

Mexico 0.4

There is no readily available information on this for Canada at this time but I would estimate that at least 15% of divorces are redivorces for one or both spouses. In the U.S., one third of all divorces occurring each year are redivorces for at least one of the spouses. For instance, in 1990, 18% of women aged 25-29 who were divorcing were doing so after a remarriage as were 31% of women aged 40-44 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997). Both here and in the U.S., people who divorce many times seem to differ from the once-divorced on some dimensions (Ambert, 1989; Booth, 1999). Some have more personal problems while others are less committed to marriage.

For Canada, there are no estimates of the number of children who experience multiple parental divorces. In the U.S., 15% of all children will see their custodial parent divorce more than once before age 18; and nearly 50% of children of divorced families see their parents divorce again. The research indicates that such multiple familial transitions correlate with declining well-being in children (Amato and Sobolewski, 2001).

The average duration of marriages ending in divorce in 1998 was 13.7 years. In the U.S., it was 11

years for first marriages and 7.2 years for all marriages--remarriages that end in divorce are of shorter duration than first marriages that do so. Statistics Canada indicates that the highest rate of divorce per 1,000 population occurs at year 5 of marriage with over 3.5 divorces per 1,000 population.

In 1998, the average age at divorce was 42 years for men and 39.4 for women. Nevertheless, people in their late twenties and early thirties are the most susceptible to divorce. For instance, in 1992, the rate of divorce per 1,000 married women was 2.2; but it was only 1.1 for women aged 45-49, and 0.65 for women 75-87 (versus 0.85 among older men).

But we do have to be careful when we consider divorce statistics by age because, among older

are adult. Furthermore, as we see later, many children who live in cohabitational families also experience the dissolution of their parents' union. For these children, the results are the same, even though they are not included in the divorce statistics.

Wolchik, and Braver, 1998).

Mother and father custody have somewhat different but equivalent results for children; on average, neither is as good in terms of child outcomes as a stable two-parent situation (Powell and Downey,

1997).

Very common but less so than before because of the increasing tendency to cohabit. Approximately 70% and 58%, respectively, of divorced men and women remarry in Canada, excluding Quebec. In Quebec, rates are closer to 45% for men and 35% for women because of a preference for cohabitation. For women between the ages of 25 and 35, the probability of marriage is 66% and closer to 80% among men. The probability between the ages of 35 and 50 for women is 48% compared to 61% for men.

For the entire country, half of stepfamilies are remarriages. In Quebec, nearly 75% of all stepfamilies are common-law unions whereas less than 45% of stepfamilies are common-law in Ontario, the Prairies, and B.C. One should note that, in Canada, stepfamilies include both marital

and cohabitational unions while, in the U.S., the term usually refers only to remarried families.

rate of redivorce is around 41% (Glossop, 2002). In the U.S., over 50% of remarriages end in divorce. But when a remarriage endures, it may outlast a first marriage. 

Common-law unions are increasing for all age groups, particularly in Quebec, but remain more frequent among the younger cohorts (Turcotte and Belanger, 1997). For instance, in 1996, 39% of all couples aged 20-30 were cohabiting (versus 21% in 1986) compared to 10% of those 50 years or over (Milan, 2000).

Figures from the General Social Survey show that in 1970-74, 17% of all first unions were common-law; in 1990-95, 57% of all first unions were common-law.

In Quebec, 80% of all first unions are common-law. In 1996, 14% of all Canadian couples were

cohabiting; 24% of all Quebec couples were compared to 9% in Ontario and British Columbia.

Between 1981 and 1995, the number of cohabiting couples tripled to over one million (Gentleman

and Park, 1997). It is often surmised that the higher rates of cohabitation in Quebec may have something to do with the fact that the Catholic Church does not sanction remarriage. However, I personally doubt that this is the entire reason because Quebecers who cohabit, as is the case elsewhere, are not as religious as people who choose to marry or remarry. Cohabitation may  simply have acquired a different cultural meaning among francophones.

In 1996, 47% of all cohabiting unions included children (Milan, 2000) or 7.9% of all children

(735,565). Younger children are more likely to live with parents in common-law unions: 14% of all children under age 6 in Canada and 31% in Quebec. Many of their parents will eventually marry, others will separate, and some of these children actually live with their mother and her cohabitant-- the latter relationship is the most likely to end in dissolution, perhaps because males invest less in a relationship that includes children who are not theirs (while remarried men are less influenced by this matter). Actually, some children live with their mother and a series of her partners. These children often have very negative outcomes (e.g., Dunifon and Kowaleski-Jones, 2002).

women in the other provinces (Turcotte, 2002).

First, cohabitation represents for many couples, particularly men, a lesser commitment than

marriage (Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, and Waite, 1996). In fact, some individuals choose cohabitation

because it requires, in their opinion, less sexual faithfulness than in marriage. Therefore, it cannot

be said that it really constitutes a "trial" marriage because the level of commitment may not be

comparable. However, many such less committed couples do, almost automatically, move on to the

next step, which is marriage, and then later divorce.

Second, some researchers find that couples who cohabit are less religious than those who marry

without cohabiting first. There are several studies indicating a correlation between religiosity and

marital happiness as well as stability (Call and Heaton, 1997). If couples who are both less religious

and less committed to each other and to the institution of marriage cohabit and then go on to marry,

it is not surprising that they will have a higher divorce rate.

Third, McLaughlin, Leonard, and Senchak (1992) have found that newly married couples who had

cohabited before marriage had substantially higher rates of premarital violence than those who had

not lived together; premarital violence was in turn followed by more marital violence than when

none had taken place before. To complete this overview, Magdol et al. (1998) have reported that, in

a group of 21-year-olds, cohabitants were significantly more likely than daters to be abusive.

Fourth, some cohabitants hope that marriage will smooth things out when their relationship is

turbulent. This is always a very optimistic hope--and a self-defeating one as well. Finally, among

some couples, cohabitation actually hastens marriage. This may be the result of conscience pangs,

religious beliefs, or parental pressure. Had these couples been merely engaged or dating, they might

have "split" before their ill-fated marriage.

Multiple, interlocking factors have contributed to the rapid rise of divorce in Canada and other

western countries in the second part of the 20th century. These same factors have contributed to the

maintenance of high rates of divorce since.

1. Divorce rates were already slowly inching up in the 19th century as the result of secularization

trends, the liberalization of norms concerning individual choice, and the lessening of religious

influence. The religious aspect is now largely missing in the institution of marriage: this is often

referred to as the desacralization of marriage. Marriage has become an individual choice rather than

a covenant before God and this change has contributed to the acceptance of its temporal nature.

2. These sociocultural trends later came to influence the liberalization of divorce laws. In turn,

easier divorce laws, such as those promulgated in 1968 and 1985, are usually followed by an

increase in divorce. Then, such laws signal the normalization of divorce. Hence, divorce lost its

stigma and became socially accepted. These cultural and legal factors have made it easier for people

to be less attached to marriage as an institution and consequently to turn to divorce.

3. The trends toward individualism that began two centuries ago have resulted in an emphasis on

rights rather than duties. When individualism is coupled with an ideology of gratification,

particularly sexual and psychological, where people are encouraged to be "happy" and "fulfilled," it

follows that the spouses' mentality about their marriage is affected (Glenn, 1996). Marriage is no

longer seen as an institution centered on mutual responsibilities but is now based on the pursuit of

happiness, fulfillment, and companionship. More is demanded of marriage in terms of personal

gratification. As Simons et al. (1996:219) put it, "If the raison d'être for marriage is mutual love and

support, it is difficult for people to justify staying in a relationship where this is no longer present."

4. Along with the trends above, Canadians and Americans have developed a lower threshold of

tolerance when their marriage does not meet with their expectations for personal fulfillment

(Amato, 1999). All things considered, while more is expected of marriage, couples are also less

tolerant about its challenges and less willing to shoulder the sacrifices it may require. At the

positive level, however, this also means that women now leave abusive relationships that would

have kept them captive 40 years ago.

1. Youthful marriages are a risk factor to divorce: young people may be in a less good position to

marry for the right reason. Furthermore, they are not as mature as older persons to cope with

conflict and their personalities have not yet stabilized. Very young people also have low incomes.

2. Low incomes and poverty are risk factors for divorce as is a very rapid upward social mobility

where the acquisition of money and status is a prime mover. This may be because such a pursuit of

materialism takes time away from relationships or reflects values which are incompatible with a

good conjugal life.

3. Cohabitation, as we have already seen, is another risk factor and so is premarital birth.

4. Men are more likely to divorce when there is a high proportion of unmarried women with them

in the labor force and the same occurs for women who work in domains with a male preponderance

(South, Trent, and Shen, 2001). These conditions raise married persons, especially men's, chances

of meeting a more attractive alternative to their current spouse.

5. Parental divorce correlates with higher divorce rates among their children later on, especially so

when the parental marriage had a low level of conflict--such parents are less committed to marriage

and may transmit this value to their offspring (Amato and DeBoer, 2001).

6. Low religiosity is related to lower marital happiness and a higher propensity to divorce (Clark,

1998; Treas and Giesen, 2000). Furthermore, religious and to some extent racial heterogamy are

risk factors for marital instability, perhaps because of a lack of shared values (Heaton, 2002).

get along," and "no longer loved each other" are actually caused by the sociodemographic factors

enumerated above. For instance, without an emphasis on individualism and gratification, people

would not divorce because they "fell out of love" or because they did not get along. In countries

where marriage is strongly institutionalized within a context of family solidarity, these reasons

would be considered frivolous. In a society where divorce is more difficult to obtain and less

acceptable, only "strong" reasons, such as abuse and abandonment, are tolerated. Therefore, before

people decide to divorce on particular grounds, a social and cultural climate has to exist that offers a

legitimate framework for their reasons. Furthermore, personal grounds for divorce such as fighting,

alcoholism, violence, tend to be mentioned more by couples with some of the demographic

characteristics discussed above, such as youthful marriages, prior cohabitation, and poverty. Thus,

cultural and demographic factors related to divorce "push" people out of marriage and into divorce

via their own personal reasons.

In this section, I will proceed by presenting the two most salient consequences of divorce: poverty

and an increased risk for the development of problems among the children involved. Then,

consequences for adults will be discussed. These consequences apply both to Canada, the U.S., and

to many other countries.

Divorce is a direct cause of poverty for a large proportion of women and their children. Finnie

(1993) has found that, in the first year after divorce, Canadian women's household income

plummets by about 50% while men's declines by a lesser 25%. However, when the figures are

adjusted for family size, women's income drops by 40% while men's increases slightly. Women's

poverty rises from 16% before divorce to 43% after divorce. Even three years after divorce,

women's income remains far below what they had during marriage and far below their ex-husbands'

current income.

Ex-husbands, compared to ex-wives, are less likely to be poor because their income is generally

higher, they do not have full care of their children with all the attendant expenses, and their support

payments are usually not crippling. Nevertheless, it should be added that in a decade when most

families have two breadwinners, men lose far more economically than in the past when they

divorce, especially those who are married to a high-earning wife. As support payments become

better enforced, these two factors may contribute in the long run to dissuade many men from

endangering their marriage.

Another way of looking at this is to consider single-mother families. In 1994, according to the

Vanier Institute of the Family, 21% of all children lived in poverty but an astounding 65.8% of

children in single-mother families did. It should also be noted that the younger the children are at

the time of parental divorce or common-law dissolution, the more likely they are to be poor. This is

because they have younger parents who earn less. On average, single parents who are poor have an

income that is 40% below the poverty line. This is dire poverty.

Canada and the U.S. are the two western countries in which single-parent families experience

extremely elevated poverty rates, and where there is a vast difference between the incomes of

single- and two-parent families.

In a nutshell, children whose parents are divorced (and even after they are remarried) are more

likely than children whose parents remain together to (e.g., Furstenberg and Kiernan, 2001; Le

Blanc, McDuff, and Tremblay, 1995 Sun and Li, 2002):

Finally, when they are older, adults whose parents divorced during their childhood and teen years,

compared to adults from intact two-parent families, tend to:

Adults are more likely to report a less happy childhood when their parents separated (Williams,

2001). As well, a study by Boyd and Norris (1995) has found that older children of divorced parents

leave home earlier than others. They leave home in even greater numbers when their custodial

parents remarry and even more so when both parents remarry. A consequence of this earlier home

leaving is that for many it becomes too expensive to continue their education. This, in turn,

contributes to lower occupational skills and higher unemployment. Frederick and Boyd (1998) have

shown, on the basis of Statistics Canada data, that 80 to 84% of men and women aged 20-44 who

lived with their two parents when they were 15 years old completed high school. This compares

with figures ranging from 65 to 73% for those whose parents had divorced, including those whose

parents had remarried.

The first is that, among an unknown number of children, some of what appear to be negative effects

of divorce already existed before parental separation. That is to say, many children and adolescents

who are difficult after divorce were also difficult before, either because of their personalities, peer

pressure, problems with parents, or interparental conflict and lack of parenting investment.

Therefore, when studying children after divorce, it is important to know how they were before the

divorce. Even so, researchers who utilize a longitudinal methodology have found that, even when

these past characteristics are taken into account, there still were effects specifically attributable to

divorce. Some of these effects have been shown to persist beyond the childhood years (Cherlin,

Chase-Lansdale, and McRae, 1998).

The second important point is that whatever statistics you read concerning the negative outcomes of

children "of divorce," they do not apply to the majority of these children. What these statistics

indicate is that children of divorced parents have a greater risk of developing problems than

children whose parents remain together (Cherlin, 1999). As Pedro-Carroll (2001) points out, one

has to differentiate between distress and disorder. Most children of divorce experience a certain

level of distress, which often lasts for over a decade, but most still function well, that is, do not

experience "disorders" (Laumann-Billings and Emory, 2000).

Nevertheless, I do not wish to err in the opposite direction and shrug off the negative effects of

divorce. They are real and costly for children, parents, and schools, as well as the welfare and health

care systems (for a review, see Ambert, 2001).

Furthermore, as the concept of distress implies, at the time of their parents' separation, children

generally suffer a great deal: most do not want them to divorce; they miss the other parent; when

little, they may feel that they are partly to blame for the divorce; some desperately try to get their

parents together again; they are sad; some cry a lot while others lash out and develop temporary

behavioral problems.

follows divorce, and is a root cause of children's problems. In fact, the "typical" negative outcomes

of children of divorce much resemble those of children in poverty (for a review, see Ambert, 1998;

Bouchard et al., 1991; Ross, Scott, and Kelly, 1995).

In the case of divorce, when children are poor or become poor, they experience a great many

stressors in their lives. This is because divorce is not a single event but a series of transitions. To

begin with, at least 55% of Canadian women and their children move after separation (Dandurand,

1994); they often have to move into more crowded and dilapidated housing, where there is more

noise and pollution. They may be less healthy as a result and more stressed. The neighborhood may

be less safe, have more children who are equally poor, and who do less well in school, and engage

more in delinquency.

Moreover, the custodial parent, generally the mother, has difficulty making ends meet and may

work long hours. When she returns home, she may be tired and generally has less time to devote to

her children. As a result, children of divorced mothers who are poor or who are financially insecure

(near poor) may receive less attention, guidance, supervision, encouragement, and affection than

other children. These mothers may not be able, for a variety of reasons, to monitor their child's

school progress or lack thereof. When the children are out of school, they may be home alone or

with peers, all unsupervised, or on the streets so to speak. Unsupervised children are far more likely

than others to engage in delinquent acts and premature sex. Thus, if we were to eliminate or even

significantly reduce child poverty, the consequences of divorce on children would be far less

negative.

2. The above paragraph has already hinted at the second cause of children's problems after divorce:

custodial parents. In turn, as we have seen, these stressors diminish parenting time, skills, expressed

affection, and increase parenting instability, harshness, or yet permissiveness. After divorce, many

parents experience a dramatic downfall in their ability to care for their children, to provide them

with a regular routine, to shelter them from stressors and dangers. Faced with their own problems,

many divorced parents too often become their children's pals and abdicate their parental

responsibilities. These adolescents then lack guidance and authoritative parenting. Amato and

Gilbreth (1999) suggest that children of divorce have better outcomes when nonresidential fathers

are more than "Sunday daddies" and behave as parents--that is, when they provide emotional and

practical support, make behavioral demands, place limits on what can be done, and administer

consistent discipline.

they become, at least temporarily, depressed while others initiate a desperate search for a new mate

that makes them far less available to their children and responsive to their needs. All of these

factors bring instability and insecurity to the home life and thereby burden children emotionally.

Carlson and Corcoran (2001) have found that a decent family income, mothers' sound

psychological functioning, and a good home environment, including adequate parenting, reduce or

eliminate the potentially negative effects of family structure.

4. Parents who continue quarreling and verbally abusing each other in front of their children after

the children are caught in the middle--may result in depression, hostility, aggressiveness, and other

acting-out activities on the part of children. Moreover, parental conflict presents a dysfunctional

role model. Children learn that disagreements can be solved only by fighting. This lesson may carry

further negative consequences down the road in their own relationships.

However, divorces that end severe interparental conflict have positive consequences for children; in

contrast, low-conflict marriages that end in divorce have a strong negative effect on children,

perhaps because, from the children's point of view, they are so unexpected and unwelcome (Booth

and Amato, 2001).

5. Some of the causes of divorce are actually in part causes of the troubled home in which the

children lived during their parents' marriage. This would apply mainly to those couples which were

conflictual and were ineffective parents because of their troubled relationship. Thus, as we have

(Cherlin et al., 1998).

6. A last cause is one that is rarely mentioned and it has to do with genetics (Rutter, 2002). A

proportion of people who divorce do so because they are difficult, conflictual, or problematic

children are already predisposed to being difficult by temperament, have a home environment

which fosters these difficulties, and the divorce situation generally exacerbates their condition.

Yes. Girls adapt generally better to divorce although not necessarily to the remarriage of a custodial

mother. There is, however, a wide diversity of adaptation levels depending on the child's personality

and the family circumstances. The same applies in terms of age. On the one hand, very small

children, younger than 4, may not note the absence of a parent they had rarely seen; if the mother

who has always been their primary caretaker functions well, they will not be significantly affected.

They will also more than likely adapt well to a parental remarriage. On the other hand, children

between 4 and 10 may be the most negatively affected because they are not yet mature enough to

understand their loss and their changing family circumstances (Jenkins and Smith, 1993). They may

even blame themselves for the divorce.

Moreover, when poverty is present, these young children are likely to be even more affected than

adolescents, particularly in terms of their intellectual development. New research clearly indicates

that poverty during the early childhood years hinders cognitive and verbal development (Pagani,

Boulerice, and Tremblay, 1997). It delays small children's adaptation into kindergarten. Many of

these children arrive in grade 1 unprepared to learn and a cycle of educational failure begins. In

contrast, a child who becomes poor only during adolescence may already have a solid foundation

on which to build success in the educational system.

Even so, older children can also be significantly affected by the six main causes of negative

outcomes discussed earlier. For adolescents, a particularly difficult situation arises when the

custodial parent loses the opportunity to communicate with and supervise them. Adolescence is

already an age when "temptations" towards deviance abound and a youth who is bereft of parental

support may succumb to detrimental peer pressures. School work may suffer accordingly.

Adolescent girls whose parents have separated, are at higher risk than others of becoming sexually

active and pregnant (Wu, 1996). This risk is further elevated when their custodial mother is openly

active sexually.

There is not a large body of research on this question in Canada. In the U.S., studies are finding

that, while a custodial mother's remarriage helps the family financially, and may be very good for

the mother, results are more mixed for children (Morrison and Ritualo, 2000). Often remarriage

results in additional negative consequences for children, particularly girls who had a close

relationship with their mother. These girls may resent the intruder. In my research, some women

students have written that they had purposely destroyed their mother's remarriage by becoming

horrendous and behaving very badly toward the new husband. For their part, boys are able to escape

as they tend, in adolescence, to spend less time at home--which may in itself lead to delinquency.

Still on the negative side, girls are more likely to be sexually abused by their stepfathers or mothers'

boyfriends than by their own fathers (Giles-Sims, 1997).

We have already mentioned that older adolescents and young adults tend to leave home earlier once

their custodial parent remarries. This may be a result of conflict with the new stepparent, or because

the new couple does not make them feel welcome, or because they are subtly or not so subtly

"encouraged" to leave.

On the positive side, younger children usually adapt better, especially when they have always

known the stepparent. Many children do enjoy or benefit from the presence and affection of a

stepparent. Many boys are advantaged by the addition of an authoritative adult male role model in

the family (Hetherington, 1993). Children may also benefit from an extension of their kinship

network with the addition of stepgrandparents and stepsiblings. Studies of young adults whose

custodial parent's remarriage had endured have found that they were strongly attached to their

reconstructed family and benefited emotionally from it. It is thus possible that some of the positive

effects of a parent's good remarriage do not appear until later on in adulthood.

On the negative side, besides poverty for a proportion of women, there is often a loss of social

support, mainly from ex-in-laws and friends whom the couple shared. Elder women and those with

little employment experience have a more difficult time. The spouse who is left generally suffers

more, at least in the first three years (Sweeney, 2002). Rates of alcohol abuse go up among divorced

men and depression among divorced women as well as a general feeling of being less healthy (Wu

and Hart, 2002). However, let's keep in mind that remaining in a bad marriage will also produce the

same noxious effects.

In my own study (Ambert, 1989) and that of other researchers since, many divorced persons admit

that they are not any happier and even are more unhappy than during their marriage. In fact, Waite

et al. (2002) have found that even unhappily married people who divorce were not necessarily

happier five years later than those who had remained married. Divorce generally involves a period

of stress, instability, loneliness, hurt feelings, and often hostility. That period lasts a few months to

two years but may persist after five years. Furthermore, as shown by the high rates of divorce in

remarriages and dissolution of subsequent cohabitations, one divorce often triggers many other

unpleasant passages.

On the positive side, divorce is or should be a good thing when there is abuse, alcoholism, and

severe conflict. It can also be functional for the spouse of a person who is criminal, severely

emotionally disturbed, or is chronically unemployed. But at best one third of all marriages that end

fall under these categories or are "bad" marriages from the spouses' perspectives. In fact, nearly one

third of all marriages ending in divorce were "average to very good" marriages for both spouses,

and another third were good to very good marriages for one of the spouses--in the latter case,

generally for the one who does not want to divorce.

For many, especially women, divorce results in the finding of new strengths, the building of

supportive relationships, the relief from fear, peace and quiet. For many as well, it means a new

love that remains "until death do us apart." There is such a thing as a "successful" divorce (Ambert,

2001). But, often, the ex-spouses have to work hard at it when they share children. All things being

said, even for adults, divorce is no cure all.

costly proposition. It is so in moral terms (after all, what can be said in favor of the "virtue" of a

society where relationships become part of the throw-away culture?), in terms of consequent

problems for children, including juvenile delinquency, welfare costs for those single-parent families

that fall into poverty, health costs, as well as a loss of productivity on the part of the affected adults

and older children.

The phenomenon of divorce is a far more complex issue than generally believed. Furthermore,

statistics pertaining to divorce are difficult to understand and, as a result, are frequently

misinterpreted. Overall, about one third of all marriages in Canada end in divorce and the rate is

higher for remarriages and cohabitations. Currently, there are no solid predictions of either a sharp

decline or a sharp rise in divorce rates in the near future.

Divorce and remarriage are adult institutions. That is, they were intended to separate couples who

could no longer live together and to allow the ex-spouses to marry other partners. As institutions,

divorce and remarriage are not necessarily in the best interest of the children and, as seen above,

divorce is not necessarily good for adults either, nor are high rates functional for society.

We have seen that divorce is often accompanied by poverty or a significant reduction in financial

resources. This factor contributes to amplifying the negative effects of divorce on the mother-child

family unit and on children's life chances. In some European societies, particularly Norway and

Sweden, the social safety net compensates greatly so that single-mother families have a (low) rate

of poverty similar to that of two-parent families. The negative consequences of divorce for children

do not disappear entirely but are less pronounced than they are in Canada and the U.S. But these

societies have lower divorce rates to begin with.

We have also seen that a sizeable proportion of marriages that end in divorce were actually quite

"salvageable," and that many of these ex-spouses are no happier after. One cannot but help to

wonder if couples who marry should not be more encouraged to face the inevitability of ups and

downs in relationships, and I am not referring here to severe conflict, which after all, afflicts only

about a third of divorcing couples. After 25 years of studying divorce, I have come to conclude that

there are too many divorces that are useless.

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