If you believe that being the first to file a lawsuit does you any good, then this could be a surprise. Because women are more likely than men to file for divorce. Since the 1950s, folks reported that women are more likely than men to want out of marriage; . This was true even as far back as the 1800s (1825 to 1866), women were the plaintiffs in divorce proceedings and it has stayed at those levels ever since.
But a new look at the current data by Dr. Michael Rosenfeld (Stanford) was presented at the American Sociological Society meeting (on my daughter’s birthday!). According to Rosenfeld’s data, women do not file first because they sense the relationship is over better than men- because both men and women are equally likely to discern the disintegration of the marriage (and relationships), even though 69% of current divorces are effected because the woman wants out.
Rosenfeld’s data was extracted from this Stanford University study of 4002 adults for the 6 year period between 2009 and 2015. These subjects were interviewed 5 times over the life of the study. The extracted group, comprised of 371 men and women (all heterosexual) who terminated relationships (or had their relationships terminated) during the time of the study. 92 were married, 76 were cohabitants, and 203 were in long-term, but not cohabiting, relationships. (Notice that this was but a small slice of the census, only 9% f the total had a relationship end during this 5 year oeriod.)
As stated above, 69% of the divorces were initiated by women. Moreover, 78% of the divorced women claimed, when interviewed, they wanted out, but only 63% of the men reported that same fact (that the woman initiated the action).
The dating and cohabiting breakups were more evenly matched – both men and women equally were the instigators. But, that same difference- that women after the breakup were more likely to have said they wanted out than men feeling the other wanted out- existed in these terminated relationships.
Despite the claims of feminism that marriage oppresses women, this data rejoins that not to be the case. So, why do women more often initiate divorce?
I guess you’ll have to do the research!
