Does divorce affect life span of kids?
By Daniel Akst
Newsday
Does divorce kill? That’s the chilling question raised by the Terman children, a group of gifted kids from California selected by psychologist Lewis Terman and followed closely by social scientists since 1921. It turns out that Terman kids whose parents divorced died an average of nearly five years younger than Terman kids from intact families. Of course, correlation doesn’t mean cause. And the world has changed a lot since those kids came of age. Divorce has gone from scandal to norm. Women have access to a full range of careers. So while divorce remains associated with all kinds of bad consequences for children, there are reasons to believe it’s no longer so strongly associated with a shortened life span.
But the focus on divorce — in the news lately with word that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver are separating — misses some larger changes in society that are probably more important.
Single parents
Recently, for example, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which consists of the world’s affluent nations, found that one in four kids in the United States is being raised by a single parent — the highest rate among OECD nations, and nearly double the average.
One reason may be that the United States has the highest rate of domestic coupling and uncoupling of any comparable country. This isn’t just about divorce; indeed, our divorce rate is well down from its peak in 1979, although still quite high by world standards. Americans just move in with (and out on) one another at unsurpassed rates. “No other comparable nation has such a high level of multiple marital and cohabiting unions,” writes the sociologist Andrew Cherlin. Can this be good for American kids? Of course not. But it’s probably not good for their parents either — or for anyone else who must live in such a restless society built on such contingent relationships.
Why are we this way? Other affluent nations have experienced a big increase in the rights and opportunities afforded women. And religion plays a bigger role here than in comparable countries. Yet we are more apt than those godless Europeans to act like conjugal pinballs, bouncing from one domestic partnership to another at a far greater rate.
National character
I see several reasons. First is our unflagging belief in the perfectibility of our lives. We habitually imagine that the grass is greener elsewhere — and that we must seek out these verdant pastures, however illusory, whatever the consequences. This has long been a part of the national character. But there’s also been a shift in our sense of obligation, so that personal fulfillment now trumps all. Behaving accordingly is not just assumed, but expected.
Note that marriage among the college-educated is much more stable than among couples who only went to high school — and that the earnings of blue-collar men have been hammered in the past 30 years. Family instability is far worse in this poorer group.
Turning back the clock to a time when divorce was rare and difficult is both impossible and undesirable. The best hope may be better education. That could help us all gain a better understanding of ourselves and one another, which might lead to more durable relationships. It could also help blue-collar Americans improve their lot — and their marital prospects.
Daniel Akst, a columnist for Newsday, is the author of “We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess” from Penguin Press. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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