Men get blamed for divorce

Wash. Post writer Darlena Cunha has an article titled: Men are to blame for the high divorce rate among America’s poor.

Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women, according to Bill Doherty, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota. In the 1960s and ’70s, he said, highly educated mothers got divorced at about the same rate of less educated mothers.

In the last decade or two, these two groups of women have been moving in opposite directions: fewer divorces for graduates, more divorces for non-graduates. In intricate lifetime marriage and divorce studies that span decades, done by Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson, 29 percent of married, college-educated couples have ever divorced. In contrast, those studies show that nearly 50 percent of married couples not holding college degrees have divorced.

Doherty theorizes that the reason for this has something to do with the changing expectations women have for their partners.

The explanation is that an unemployed husband is a huge liability for the poor mom, because unless he is bringing in a lot of money, she can do much better with the welfare benefits for single moms. Hence she gets a divorce.

A number of comments there say the obvious.