Socioeconomic, Sociodemographic and Attitudinal Correlates of the Tempo of Divorce

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and attitudinal characteristics of husbands and wives on the timing of marital dissolution. The primary concerns were with divorce and the intervals of marital duration before divorce occured. The analysis was based on data collected from an initial sample of 610 couples in the early years of marriage, all of whom resided within a large North Central Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area in 1978. The couples were reinterviewed seven years later in 1985 (N = 544). The data collected from the first wave of subjects were used to identify antecedent characteristics of husbands and wives, whereas, data from the second wave were used to measure the timing (tempo) of marital dissolution among the 105 couples who subsequently divorced. Partial correlation coefficients indicated that the tempo of divorce significantly varied according to the wife's employment status, occupational status, future work plans, father's education, age at marriage, gender role orientation and number of children. Moreover, a multiple classification analysis of these variables showed that under controlled conditions wives' employment status and number of children were more powerful predictors of the tempo of divorce.

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