The most optimistic view holds that the divorce rate has pretty much stabilized-and may even continue to dip. Today’s generation of young adults is the first to emerge from the period in which the number of divorces in America rose sharply, from about 400,000 in 1960 to roughly 1.1 million a since the mid-’70s. Some experts believe that these young people, knowing the pain of their parents’ divorces, will fight harder for their own marriages. Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins sociologist and coauthor of the book “Divided Families,” notes that children born during the 1930s Depression–when the divorce rate soared–grew up with a powerful resistance to breaking up; divorce was relatively uncommon in the 1950s.
Other demographers believe the current decline in divorces is merely a lull before a record storm of marital splits. According to Larry Bumpass, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, and his colleague Sara McLanahan, the adult children of divorced parents are more likely to break up than those whose parents have stayed together. Bumpass projects that 60 percent of recent marriages will eventually end in divorce-lo percentage points higher than even the most dire predictions of the last few years.
Yet another possibility is suggested by recent census figures which show that more couples are living together and having children without marriage. This reluctance to wed could lower the divorce rate by weeding out some of the least compatible relationships. Still, it would be a sad irony indeed if the ultimate cure for a high divorce rate was simply not getting married at all.
