Who will Divorce: A 14-Year Longitudinal Study of Black Couples and White Couples

Abstract

The present study examines the early development of marriage for a representative sample of urban white couples and black couples. We are interested in predicting the stability of these marriages over the first 14 years of marriage. First, we assess whether objective social and economic conditions account for divorce over time. These factors focus on oppressive social conditions, lower status positions in society, and challenges of parenthood and family responsibilities. Next, we concentrate on perceived interactive processes between spouses that are critical for maintaining a relationship over time. We postulate that race, gender, and time act as contexts in which to understand the quality and impact of structure and the perceptions of interaction in predicting divorce. Results indicate that both race and education are critical to the risk of divorce over 14 years. Perceived interactional processes are also important to divorce, but often depend on the contexts of race and gender.

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Divorce and Child Behavior Problems: Applying Latent Change Score Models to Life Event Data

“…Although race was included as a covariate in our models, we did not have a large enough sample of African Americans to fully explore how race might moderate the effects of divorce on children's externalizing behavior problems. African Americans have higher rates of divorce compared to European Americans (Kposowa, 1998;Orbuch, Veroff, Hassan, & Horrocks, 2002). Moreover, it is estimated that 45% of European American youth will spend some amount of time in a single-parent home, compared to 86% of African American youth (Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986).…”

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“…Caucasian, 14 and having higher education. 13 It has been argued that individuals marrying at a young age are perhaps less compatible, less prepared for marriage, and lack economic resources.…”