We got less married, we got married later, but … do we get married worse? Are our more weak marriages? Do we divorce more today than at the time of our parents or grandparents? There are studies that ensure that more than 50% of couples who give the ‘yes I want’ in Spain end up separating, but a new American research has just deepened in that data with a curious revelation: today it is much rarely than a newly married couple separates after ten years of conjugal life than those that joined 50 or 60 years ago.
The big question is … why?
Condemned to divorce? Recently the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), an American institution that is dedicated among other things to studies on families and marriage, an interesting question was asked: is the old mantra true that half of the marriages end up in the courts signing their divorce? It is not a minor issue. First, because at least in the US it looks like a popular mantra. Second, because that bulky percentage equals the chances of succeeding in conjugal life with those of launching a currency and that is expensive.
What did you discover? For his investigation, the IFS uses the data of the US Census office, so his conclusions are basically a relay of what happens on the other side of the Atlantic. Making clear that starting point, it is not unreasonable to think that the patterns and trends that it has identified are more or less transferable to Europe. The reason? His experts discovered a very clear phenomenon: although it is true that every time we marry less, the couples who give the ‘yes I want’ today create much more unions solids than those of a few decades, when there were many more people who formalize their relationship.
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What do the figures say? That only 18% of official marriages between 2010 and 2012 divorced after ten years. It is a percentage somewhat higher than that of the couples who married in the 1950s, but it is below those who gave the ‘yes I want’ in the 60, 70, 80 and 90. Ifl has not published their data in detail, but it has prepared a revealing graph that shows that the percentage of marriages of the 1970s dissolved after ten years was around 30%.
Moreover, according to their data it is not correct that half of the marriages end up breaking. Taking into account its most recent records, that percentage is around 40%. And his forecast is that he descends as time passes.
What does that mean? “The new marriages are more solid today than in any other decade since the 50s. Although the new marriages in the 2000s initially resembled those of the 90s, divorce rates were reduced after five years. At 20 marriages in the 2000s had a behavior similar to those of the 60s,” the report collects. “We have verified an increase in stability since the late 1970s. And so far the marriages formed in the 2010 maintains.”
Are there more readings? After accounting the IFL discovered that the percentage of dissolved marriages after ten years of relationship varied considerably depending on when couples had married. Among those who did in the 50s represented 14%, among those of the 60s 18%, in the case of married couples in the 70s the divorce percentage reached 30%and those of the 80s, 27%. Since then that indicator has decreased to 18%.
If we talk about the risk of rupture, among the official marriages in the decade of 2000 the culminating point is five years of relationship. From that moment the risk is slowly decreasing. In the case of marriages created in the 70s the “high point of instability” occurs at age eight.
What about gray divorce? The IFL points out that curiously what seems to gain relevance is the “gray divorce”, which is between couples over 50 years after decades of relationship. It is nothing new, nor exclusive to the US. In 2022 the INE scored 80,000 divorces in Spain, of which 33% occurred between marriages that had more than two decades together. The IFL however recalls that most married people over 60 years of age went through the altar in the 70s and 80s.
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What does all that mean? That the resistance of marriages seems to have evolved with society itself. The percentage of divorces was low in the 50s, increased after “the cultural transformation of the 1960s and 1970s radically changed the stability of the unions” and has been reconfigured as couples did, less and less prone to marry.
“The most recent marriages have already shown greater stability, which could be due to the fact that they are more selective,” the study slides. They are valuations in the light of US data, but Spain has experienced its own drift. In our country a milestone was marked by the approval of the Divorce Law in 1981.
Have couples changed? Yes. And that is something that the American study also reflects clearly. If in the 1980s 80% of the people married before they turn 30, between 2000 and 2012 that percentage had declined to 64%. The trend is transferable to our country. Last year the CEU demographic observatory published a report that shows that the probability of ceasing to be single before the age of 50 has gone from representing almost 100% to move between 43 and 47%, depending on whether we talk about men or women.
Do we get married later? Yes. The CEU analysis also confirms that in the 70s between 85 and 90% of the people who married they did it before the age of 30. Today that percentage does not even reach 20%. In 1976 the Spaniards who were married for the first time had average 26.7 years (24.1 if we talk about women). In 2022 the figure was already 36.8, or 34.9 in the case of brides. The report, however, reaches a different conclusion from that of the IFS on divorces: according to their accounts, 50% of the unions end up in rupture, which would confirm the American mantra.
Do we marry less? That’s how it is. We got married later and of course we get less married, a shared trend with this Europe. It comes to look at the INE data to verify it: in 1976 the gross bridal rate, which measures the number of marriages per thousand inhabitants, was 7.18. In 1996 he had already dropped to 4.82, in 2006 he stood at 4.64 and 2023, the last data published by the body on its website, the indicator already marked 3.55.
“Between the Spaniards and the Europeans who died in 2021 with 80 years or more, less than 8 % were single; with the current rates of Primonuptionality They estimate the equivalent of the probability that an adult ceases to be single, just over half of the young Spaniards will never marry, “collects the report prepared by the CEU. That does not mean that today’s young people do not form stable couples. Simply do so is no longer synonymous with marriage.
Image | Leonardo Miranda (UNSPLASH)
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