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Divorce Statistics: How Divorce Benefits Society

Whilst divorce may be more socially acceptable today than at any other time in recent memory, there are still those who would argue that marital dissolution is one of the biggest problems facing society.

Such claims are not entirely without merit. Divorce can, and occasionally does, result in children losing contact with their parents, deserted spouses becoming severely depressed and, in the very worst cases, single-parent families residing in destitution. Fortunately, though, such outcomes are rare and we at Quickie Divorce are of the opinion that divorce can actually be a force for good.

Some of the reasons why divorce is beneficial are obvious. It allows people to leave unhappy marriages, rebuild their lives and find new and fulfilling relationships. Recent academic research, though, has revealed a surprising fact: as the divorce rate has risen, rates of domestic violence have fallen.

According to Evergreen State College’s professor of history and women’s studies Stephanie Coontz, rates of domestic violence increased significantly during the Great Depression of the 1930’s and that this increase coincided with a falling divorce rate attributable to the fact that fewer couples could afford to divorce one another.

Following the Great Depression having come to an end, the divorce rate began to rise and rates of domestic violence subsided. Furthermore, following no-fault divorces (the American term for uncontested divorce), which made it significantly easier for couples to obtain a divorce, being introduced in the 1970s, rates of domestic violence decreased by between 20 and 30%.

Coontz also noted that significantly fewer wives committed suicide and that a smaller number of husbands were murdered by their wives following no-fault divorce having become the norm.

So, divorce – as Koontz herself puts it – provides unhappy couple with a ‘safety valve’ and, rather than bring about social degradation, significantly reduces the possibility of a spouse being harmed by their partner. Divorce, then, can indeed be beneficial to society