- Feb 5, 2002
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For years now, I have gone around telling bad news about marriage. But I recently found out this particular information was wrong, which is really good news! Actually, most people in the marriage ministry world have been wrong.
We were led to believe by statisticians that in America about half of all marriages end in divorce, which led me to believe that about two-thirds of stepfamily couples divorce. But it turns out that the pessimism that currently exists about the institution of marriage is misguided.
The book’s conclusions are not without controversy in the academic and marriage ministry world, but we should not ignore the overall “good news” offered in the book. In brief, they are:
Continued below.
We were led to believe by statisticians that in America about half of all marriages end in divorce, which led me to believe that about two-thirds of stepfamily couples divorce. But it turns out that the pessimism that currently exists about the institution of marriage is misguided.
The good news about the bad news
In May of 2014, Shaunti Feldhahn and Tally Whitehead released a stunning book about the marital divorce rates in America. Entitled The Good News About Marriage, the book presents a thorough and comprehensive examination of how divorce rates are calculated, and ultimately challenges the societal assumptions we make about marriage based on those rates.The book’s conclusions are not without controversy in the academic and marriage ministry world, but we should not ignore the overall “good news” offered in the book. In brief, they are:
- While the projected divorce rate (the risk of divorce over someone’s lifetime) has been reported to be around 50 percent, the current divorce rate (those already divorced at any given point in time) has never actually hit 50 percent. In other words, our predictions are worse than reality.
- Estimates of the current divorce rate for first marriages is only 20-25 percent, for all marriages it’s 31 percent, and for remarriages it’s 34 percent.
- The blended family divorce rate is difficult to calculate because we have little research to go on. Based on data presented in the The Good News About Marriage, I now estimate the current divorce rate to be 45-50 percent and the projected rate to be 50-60 percent (far below the two-thirds or higher rate I reported previously).[1]
- Christian couples (i.e., those who practice their beliefs and attend church regularly) do not divorce at the same rate as non-Christians. Numerous studies point to a rate of 15-20 percent.
- Most couples are happy. About 80 percent of couples report being “somewhat happy to very happy.”[2]
The good news for your marriage
Continued below.
