With all of the news lately about high-profile politicians whose marriages are in trouble due to infidelity, one would think that the institution of marriage in America is at an all-time low, and that Karen and I, who recently celebrated 24 years of marriage, are anomalies. Not so, according to today Kay Hymowitz in today’s Wall Street Journal:
In any crisis, people tend to panic and forget basic facts. This meltdown is no exception. First and foremost, marital breakdown is not rampant across the land. It is concentrated among low-income and black couples. Americans seem to have a lot of trouble grasping this fact, probably because so much public space is taken up by politicians, celebrities and journalists with marriages on the skids. But in actuality, the divorce rate for college-educated women has been declining since 1980. Out-of-wedlock childbearing among the educated class remains rare. The bottom line is that higher-income, college-educated couples are far more likely to get married and stay married than their less-educated and lower-income peers. We shouldn’t go so far as to call Ms. Loh and Mr. Sanford, if he decides to return to the heart he left in Buenos Aires, outliers. But they do nothing to clarify a key problem facing the country, which remains the apartheid state of marriage.
The seemingly reasonable notion that marriage is crashing because we’re likely to live till 80 also doesn’t hold up. The typical divorce is not of a midlife couple bored with finishing each other’s sentences; it’s of a twosome who have just written the last thank-you note for wedding gifts. More than one-fifth of marriages break up within five years. The median age at first divorce is 30.5 for males and 29 for females. The risk of break-up goes up after one year of marriage and peaks at 4½ years. That’s right. A lot of Americans barely wait till the paint is dry in the new family room before setting out for more promising territory.
One of the many ironies of the institution is that marriage seems more satisfying to those who no longer have children in the house. If people simply grew more tired of each other over time, then we would expect that couples unloading the Explorer at the college dorm would head directly to the lawyer’s office. On the contrary, marital happiness increases once the kids are gone, despite the prospect of decades of dreary, pass-the-Maalox-dear evenings. A few years ago the AARP warned of a growing trend in “gray divorce”; others cautioned about the coming of “Viagra divorce,” as older men came to realize that, with a little chemical help, they could restart their engines. Didn’t happen. Empty-nesters still stay together for the duration, just as they did 40 years ago.
Perhaps it’s the declining hormones of late middle age. Perhaps it’s the joint pride of a difficult task completed. Maybe they’re satisfied with their investment, after all.
It is true that our two children have reduced our “personal time” as a couple to almost zero, for time, energy, and money reasons. It is also true, however, that they remind us daily why we did get married, as they shine lights on both our strengths and weaknesses. In our parenting, professional work, and interactions with friends and family, Karen and I work to reinforce our individual and collective strengths, and help each other overcome our weaknesses. One of my favorite poems is by Robert Browning, and I often quote from it in birthday and anniversary cards to Karen:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
Aneil
P.s. For background on the poem, please go here.
Filed under: Interpersonal, Parenting | Tagged: children, divorce, marriage, Rabbi ben Ezra, Robert Browning | Leave a Comment »
