Tuesday, August 6, 2002

A story released today by ABC News reports that a controversial new study is disputing the logic that divorced people are no happier than unhappy couples who choose to stay married.

The report, "Does Divorce Make People Happier?," also says that most unhappy marriages become happier if couples stick it out. The study was released today by the Institute for American Values. Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of the book The Case for Marriage, is the lead author of the study. She says the unhappy couples in her study who decided to divorce are no happier than those who stayed married.

The researcher used data collected by the National Survey of Family and Households, a nationally representative survey that extensively measures personal and marital happiness. Out of 5,232 married adults interviewed in the late 1980s, 645 reported being unhappily married. Five years later, these same adults were interviewed again. Some had divorced or separated and some had stayed married.

However, Pepper Schwartz, author of the book Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong, says the institute's findings result from a flawed study. Schwartz says the researchers combined both divorced and separated couples in the study.

"Separated people are notoriously the least happy of all; they're in transition," Schwartz said. "So, if you take the separated people out of their data, only look at the divorced people, you find, indeed, that divorced people are happier than the people who stayed in the unhappy marriage."

Schwartz says divorced people become happier when the divorce is behind them, adding that she has seen plenty of data supporting her claim.

Waite's research team also reported that two-thirds of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happy five years later.

Schwartz says unhappy couples don't just become happy, she says they become resigned to the marriage.

"That just doesn't pass the smell test," Schwartz said. "They justify their choice, they stay there because of the children or because they believe in marriage as an institution and they're going to slug through it. But happier or happy enough to justify it in other people's opinion, no."