Citation

Hawkins AJ, Galovan AM, Harris SM, Allen SE, Allen SM, Roberts KM, Schramm DG. Fam. Process 2017; 56(4): 852-868.

Affiliation

Utah State University, Logan, UT.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Family Process Institute, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/famp.12299

PMID

28623842

Abstract

This study reports on a nationally representative sample of married individuals ages 25-50 (N = 3,000) surveyed twice (1 year apart) to investigate the phenomenon of divorce ideation, or what people are thinking when they are thinking about divorce. Twenty-eight percent of respondents had thought their marriage was in serious trouble in the past but not recently. Another 25% had thoughts about divorce in the last 6 months. Latent Class Analysis revealed three distinct groups among those thinking about divorce at Time 1: soft thinkers (49%), long-term-serious thinkers (45%), and conflicted thinkers (6%). Yet, divorce ideation was not static; 31% of Time 1 thinkers were not thinking about it 1 year later (and 36% of nonthinkers at Time 1 were thinking about it 1 year later). Also, Latent Transition Analysis revealed 49% of Time 1 long-term-serious thinkers, 56% of soft thinkers, and 51% of conflicted thinkers had shifted groups at Time 2, mostly in the direction of less and softer thinking about divorce. Overall, divorce ideation is common but dynamic, and it is not necessarily an indication of imminent marital dissolution.

© 2017 Family Process Institute.

Language: en

Keywords

Divorce; Divorce Decision-Making; Divorce Ideation; Latent Class Analysis; Latent Transition Analysis; análisis de clasificación latente; análisis de transición latente; divorcio; muestra nacional; toma de decisiones sobre el divorcio; 全国样本; 潜在分类分析; 潜在转折分析; 离异; 离异决定