Like most over the years I have been subjected to the flood of information about the prevalence of divorce. It appears to have been a misinformation campaign designed to make divorce more common, not merely more acceptable. It appears to have been a campaign designed to reduce the stability of marriage, the family, and hence the stability of American society.
The truth is “first time marriages” ending in divorce never exceeded the 50% threshold. While at one time it may have approached 50%, the way the statistics were presented by the media was a bunch of lies! They reported the stats in a manner to obscure the truth and I believe induce the US towards becoming a more unstable society.
How did they do this? Lie with statistics? They aggregated the data in a manner to deceive and mislead the public. While there were people who remarried and divorced multiple times, those were reported in a fashion that allowed one to draw erroneous conclusions. It is indeed true that there are many who marry & divorce multiple times, and those marriages & divorces were throwing the statistics off.
In October 2006 at the Arizona Psychological Association a young psychologist out of Tucson whose specialty is divorce and marriage presented his data. He really knew his stuff and I would like to get him on my show. At that time this young doctor told us that the divorce rate for first time marriages was falling so fast that they (he and others studying marriage and divorce statistics) did not want to put a number on it!
What he did say is first time marriages ending in divorce rates were plummeting and no one knew why. Divorce among first time marriages dropped below 40% and was continuing to drop at such a rapid pace no one knew what the current rate was. The best guess we could get him to commit to was “about 33 to 34 %.” There was speculation that first time marriages ending in divorce would stabilize at about 30%.
Conclusion:
There is hope for life time marriage. Marriage can last a lifetime!