Below is an article I wrote some time ago which attempts to explain why couples who use contraception have a 50% divorce rate, while couples who do not have only a 2% divorce rate. The article begins by discussing why the birth control pill caused a large increase in divorce when it first debuted on the market in the 1960’s, and then the article goes on to discuss why the use of contraception continues to cause divorce today. Enjoy!
The Link between Contraception and Divorce
Divorce has reached epidemic proportions in this country. More than one million divorces occur in the United States each year, and couples entering first marriages have a 50% chance that their union will end in divorce. This article will attempt to explain why the use of contraception in marriage often leads to divorce.
Good statistics on divorce rates have been kept since shortly before the Civil War. At that time, divorce was extremely uncommon, and only about 2 in every 1,000 marriages ended in divorce every year. Between 1860 and 1960, divorce rates exhibited a slow upward trend, with the exception of the years during the Great Depression, and shortly following World War I and World War II. Each of those three periods experienced a short duration of an increased divorce. Shortly after the end of each of those three crises, divorce levels returned to its normal slow creep upward (Michael, 1988). Therefore, for the first hundred years that good data was available, divorce rates stayed fairly constant, and only very small increases to the divorce rate were seen.
However, beginning shortly after 1960, divorce rates changed dramatically. The slow, small increases seen in the divorce rate for the past hundred years changed into a doubling of the divorce rate in only a decade. Starting around the mid-1960’s, a new trend emerged, and the trend looked completely different than any divorce trend seen before. Prior to 1960, the divorce trends only increased slightly for about 100 years. After 1960, the divorce trends changed from a slow creep to a doubling of the divorce rate. Those high rates of divorce persist today.
What happened in the mid-1960’s to cause such a radical shift in the divorce rate in such a short period of time? Certainly, many societal changes occurred in the mid-1960’s, and many of the originally suspected causes of the doubling of the divorce rate have been eliminated. Michael (1988) provides an excellent review of all the possible factors that were found to be unrelated to the jump in the divorce rate.
For example, the rise in the divorce rate was not specific to only the U.S. Both Michael (1988) and Fukuyama (1999) note that similar post-1960 divorce patterns can be seen in many (but not all) countries around the world. Therefore, it is quite clear that the explanation is not related to something specific to the United States. Interestingly, each country’s jump in divorce rates all started at approximately the same time (around the mid-1960’s). Therefore, the rise in divorce was not caused by anything unique to the United States.
Second, many states loosened the restrictions of divorce laws beginning around 1970. However, the sudden rise in divorce began approximately seven years before the divorce laws changed. Therefore, “no-fault” divorce did not cause the doubling of the divorce rate from the mid-1960’s to the mid-1970’s, since the doubling began well before the divorce laws changed. Michael (1988) confirms this conclusion by citing research by several authors that all agree that the creation of loose divorce laws followed (instead of proceeded) the increase in divorce. Of course, current easy divorce laws do not help the divorce rate in this country, and it may have some impact on some couples today. However, the sudden rise in the divorce rate in this country from the mid-1960’s to the mid-1970’s cannot be attributable to the change in divorce laws.
Michael (1988, 1978) also points out that the sudden increase in the divorce rate did not occur as the result of a population shift in age. Most divorces occur in the first five years of marriage. Therefore, Michael points out that a rise in the divorce rate might simply reflect an increase in the proportion of younger individuals in the population. For example, as baby boomers reached marrying ages, a higher proportion of younger, newer couples existed among all married couples. If a higher proportion of married couples are recently married, then the divorce rate would increase because newer couples have the highest likelihood of divorce.
However, Michael again notes that this is not the case. He states (1988) that “the decade’s rise in divorce is surely not due to a shift in the age structure of the married population.” Thus, while the aging of baby boomers does account for a small amount of the increase, it does not explain the majority of the increase.
Michael (1988) also notes that the increase in the divorce rate did not also increase due to a higher proportion of second marriages. Second marriages experience higher divorce rates than first marriages. Therefore, if more marriages were second marriages, this, too, could explain the rise in divorce. Michael again points out that this did not occur.
Finally, Michael also notes that no regional trends in the U.S. divorce rate can be found. Therefore, the rise in divorce cannot be explained by anything that might be specific to a certain geographical area, like the East Coast. Divorce rates doubled across the country at approximately the same time.
Therefore, although each of the above explanations sounds plausible, the data finds that all of the above causes did not cause the doubling of the divorce rate. Of course, Michael (1988) points out that these factors might explain some of the rise in divorce. However, he states, “ …taken in isolation they do not appear to provide a good explanation for why the divorce rate doubled between, say, 1963 and 1974. That doubling of the U.S. divorce rate represents a major demographic phenomenon; there has been surprisingly little analysis of it as yet.”
If geographic trends, law changes, demographic shifts, and other possible causes do not explain why the divorce rate doubled so dramatically, what does? Michael (1978) noticed a unique phenomenon that provided the first clue. He discovered that the majority of all those divorces occurred among young couples in their 20’s and 30’s. Therefore, while the increase in divorce did not occur simply because of the large number of baby boomers, the increase in divorce did seem limited to younger couples in their 20’s and 30’s. This brought further proof to the idea that the loosening of divorce laws and other changes did not cause the divorce rate to double. Changes in divorce laws would have affected younger and older couples more equally. However, back in 1978, Michael was among the first researchers to realize that most divorces were occurring among couples in the prime of their fertility. Michael was also among the first to suspect that the rising divorce rate could have some relationship to the postponement of that fertility.
Changes in Fertility
Did anything dramatic occur in the mid-1960’s that might have an influence on fertility? Most definitely. The birth control pill became widely used around this time. Michael notes that the divorce trends mirror the trends of contraceptive use. In 1963, only 3% of women were using the birth control pill or IUD. In 1973, use of artificial contraception reached a record high, with 48% of all women using the Pill or IUD. Michael notes that new contraceptive technology reached a saturation point in the mid-1970’s, and any woman that wanted access to the Pill or IUD was able to have it. It was also at this same point in time that divorce rates peaked and remained steady at 50%.
The trends in divorce and the trends in contraceptive use mimic each other. Contraceptives weren’t officially legal in the United States until 1965, because Protestant legislators banned the sale of contraceptives by passing the Comstock laws in the 1800’s. It wasn’t until the 1965 court case of Griswold v. Connecticut that contraception was officially made legal in this country. Therefore, both divorce and use of contraceptives were limited before the mid-1960’s, but both doubled approximately 10 years later. Is this a coincidence, or are the two trends related?
The invention of the Pill and IUD brought about a “contraceptive revolution”, because they provided effective means of preventing pregnancy. This is completely different from other methods of contraception that existed prior to 1965, like condoms and diaphragms. Prior to the invention of the birth control pill, there was no effective method of preventing pregnancy. Many women used barrier methods like condoms and diaphragms, but they were not particularly reliable. Current research finds that among married women over the age of 20, condoms have an annual failure rate of 12%. (Teenagers have an 18% annual failure rate when using condoms). Diaphragms have an even higher annual failure rate, at 18%. Notice that these statistics are annual failure rates – meaning that they don’t even begin to suggest what a couple’s failure rate may be over the course of an entire marriage. In fact, Michael (1999) notes that women using condoms (before the advent of the Pill) averaged anywhere between 0 and 4.8 unplanned pregnancies over the course of a marriage. Therefore, prior to the debut of the birth control pill, couples had a lot more “surprise” pregnancies than they currently do today.
Consequently, prior to 1960, unplanned pregnancies were common. However, shortly after the 1960’s, contraception became available, methods of surgical sterilization improved, and abortion became legal. Therefore, in less than a decade, women’s positions changed from having little control over their fertility to having complete control over their fertility (assuming a woman was willing to terminate contraceptive failures by abortion).
Is there any evidence that this radical shift in fertility influenced the divorce rate? Indeed, many studies have found a higher rate of divorce among contraceptive users, the first study conducted in 1974 by the Royal College of General Practitioners. They were surprised to find that divorce was twice as common among Pill users as among non-Pill users. Many additional studies conducted since the 1970’s have confirmed this finding.
In addition to studying couples, researchers have also compared various countries. They’ve found that countries with the lowest rates of contraception use (like Southern and Eastern Europe) have lower divorce rates than Northern and Western Europe, which have high rates of contraception use. (Spinelli and colleagues, 2000; Fukuyama, 1999). Additionally, Japan did not allow the birth control pill to be used until late in 1999, and Japan has a low divorce rate.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that research by Michael (1988) and Fukuyama (1999) found that use of the Pill directly caused about half of the increase in divorce between the mid-1960’s and the mid-1970’s. The second factor, which caused the other half of the increase in divorce, was indirectly related to use of the Pill – women entering the workforce. Women were not able to remain in the workforce reliably before the advent of contraception, because careers were often interrupted by an unplanned pregnancy. Consequently, the divorce rate doubled because of the Pill and because of women in the workforce, and these two factors are strongly tied. Therefore, either directly or indirectly, artificial contraception has, almost singlehandedly, doubled the divorce rate in this country.
Contraception and the Divorce Rate
It is easy to understand why contraception increased the divorce rate in the mid-1960’s. The Pill was a “shock” to marriages – an unexpected occurrence that greatly altered couples’ expectations. Shocks to a marriage often result in instability, and are not limited to the Pill. For example, winning the lottery or losing a fortune both produce a “shock” to a marriage, because a significant and unexpected change in a couple’s financial situation occurred. Similarly, the death of a child also results in a high likelihood of divorce, because the child’s death was both unexpected and highly tragic. Wars (Michael, 1988) and major illnesses (Glantz and colleagues, 2001) also cause shocks to marriages, and tend to destabilize them. Therefore, given the enormous change in fertility rates caused by the Pill, it is easy to understand how the advent of the Pill caused a shock to married couples. The Pill’s arrival produced the same instabilities as couples winning the lottery, losing their fortunes, sending a spouse off to battle, being diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness, or even experiencing the death of a child. The Pill radically altered fertility, and this unexpected situation gave rise to many new problems for married couples.
Many couples suddenly found that they were incompatible when it came to the decision to use contraception. Since this new technology was unexpected, fiancées were unable to determine before marrying whether they would be compatible on the use of contraception. Therefore, some married couples found that they shared different preferences for use of the new technology. If one spouse wanted to use the Pill while the other did not, a conflict arose. The Pill presented an unexpected option for many couples, and the decision to use or not use this new option was a source of conflict for some couples.
However, if this “unexpected option” were the only way the Pill influenced divorce, then today’s divorce trends would look much different than they actually do. If the Pill only influenced divorce rates upon its initial debut, then the Pill would have only caused a sudden increase in divorce, followed by a return to pre-Pill rates. This short “blip” on the graph is exactly what is seen around the Great Depression, World War I, and World War II. Unfortunately, the Pill did not cause a short “blip” on the divorce trends like wars do. Instead, the Pill and other contraceptives increased divorce rates and kept them at 50%. The Pill caused the divorce rate to double from 25% to 50% in less than ten years, and the high 50% divorce rate remained. Therefore, aside from the Pill’s effects on women in the workforce, the Pill must continue to influence the divorce rate even today.
How else does contraception influence the divorce rates, both then and today? Eight reasons are identified why the use of contraception increases the current divorce rate.
How contraception causes divorce today
First, contraception gives couples an option as to how many children they would have, and when they would bear those children. Consequently, today’s couples are able to disagree about childbearing issues. Prior to the Pill, couples assumed that perfect control of their fertility was not an option, and an attitude of flexibility was adopted. However, contraception now placed fertility on the bargaining table, and couples could decide if they will have children, how many children they wished to raise, and when. If the man and woman didn’t have the same preferences, friction often arose.
Consequently, many married couples plan the births of all their children. On the surface, this would appear to be a positive outcome, because if the woman knew she would become pregnant, she can improve her nutrition, quit smoking, not drink, and engage in other positive behaviors. However, the reality is that the “planned” or “wanted” child in marriages means that the child fits into a rigid agenda. In contrast, in pre-Pill days, pregnancies were not always planned and instead, children were viewed not as “planned” but as “welcomed”. A “welcomed” child is one who may not be planned, but accepted lovingly into the family nonetheless. Therefore, the difference between a “planned” pregnancy and a “welcomed” pregnancy may appear to be minor, but it further underscores the less flexible attitudes today’s couples have about when and how many children they might bear.
When society insists that all children must be “planned” and “wanted”, it sets those children up for all types of expectations that didn’t exist prior to 1965. Leon Kass (2002) states, “Few seem to care about what it means for a society increasingly to regard a child not as a mysterious stranger given to be cherished as someone to take our place, but rather as a product of our will, to be perfected by design and to satisfy our wants.”
Additionally although contraception is much more effective today than it was prior to the 1960’s, contraceptive failures do sometimes occur. Unfortunately, an unplanned pregnancy in the “post-Pill” era is more unexpected and oftentimes more problematic than before 1965. Prior to the Pill, flexibility was always maintained, but in post-Pill America, an unplanned pregnancy in a marriage can create much more instability and emotional trauma. Further, a contraceptive failure caused by the Pill is often seen as the wife’s fault, and this, too, negatively impacts both women and marriages.
A second way that the Pill increases divorce rates is by delaying the birth of the couple’s first child. Research by the Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker from the University of Chicago and other researchers that states that the presence of young children in the household inhibits divorce. According to Becker, the presence of a young child in the house is associated with a 30% lower divorce rate between the fifth and fifteenth year of marriage. If there are two children in the house instead of one, it decreases the likelihood of divorce by an additional 30%.
Why might the delay of childbearing cause an increase in the divorce rate? No studies have found the answer, but many notable academics have offered very plausible hypotheses. For example, Dr. Janet Smith (1999) notes that couples who bear children early in their marriages will be more motivated to keep the relationship together for several reasons. First, most couples (and almost all researchers) believe it is in the best interests of children to live in an intact household. Therefore, love for their child will motivate them to seek out what’s best for that child. Second, especially for the husbands, a divorce will often result in less time with their child, because the child would no longer live under the father’s roof. Therefore, it is in the best interests of both the child and the parents to keep the relationship together. The child will benefit from two loving parents while the parents will benefit by maximizing their time with their child.
Janet Smith gives a second reason why couples who delay childbearing might have higher divorce rates. Smith notes that parenthood forces individuals to “grow up,” in a sense. Being a successful parent means developing positive traits such as patience, understanding, and a willingness to make sacrifices for the good of the family. Of course, developing such virtues does not happen overnight. Instead it is often a gradual process, but once attained, these virtues provide benefits both for the child and the spouse. Additionally, parents must role model the types of positive behaviors they wish to promote in their children, such as avoiding the use of profanity, eating their vegetables, and even going to church. These positive traits are not only beneficial for a child, but for spouses as well. Further, Smith argues that when people become parents, they often care about a wider spectrum of issues, such as the quality of the schools, the crime rate, and pollution. For most individuals, becoming a parent requires that individuals adopt more positive traits that benefit not only their relationship with their child, but their relationship with their spouse as well.
Countless articles in various parenting magazines agree with Smith’s assertions. For example, a 2003 article in Babytalk was entitled “Eight ways motherhood has made me a better person.” Additionally, in American Baby’s August, 2003 issue, author Marisa Cohen argues that the overwhelming majority of parents wish to become “neater, healthier, better-mannered” for the sake of their child, “who watches and copies every move I make.” She also says to “Ask any new mom and she’ll probably admit she’s trying to curse less, read more, and trade junk food for healthier fruits and veggies.” Other efforts cited by Cohen of new parents include limiting smoking, drinking, eating junk food, yelling less, forgiving in-laws for the sake of the child’s relationship with their grandparents, picking up litter, caring more about the community, and kicking bad habits even as small as nail-biting. Additionally, Keyes (2002) found that parents are twice as likely as childless adults to volunteer in their community.
Therefore, delaying childbearing keeps couples from working to keep the marriage together, and also from improving themselves. Another drawback to delayed childbearing is a decrease in marital fidelity. Gray and colleagues (2002) found that the interaction of a man with his family causes his testosterone levels to drop, contributing to his faithfulness. Gray found that all men had similarly high levels of testosterone in the morning, but married men’s levels dropped more than bachelors, and fathers showed an even more dramatic difference. Other studies have found that artificially increasing testosterone levels cause men to “play the field”.
Third, the Pill has many side effects. Many women experience side effects from the Pill, including irritability, mood swings, headaches, loss of libido, nausea, irregular bleeding, hair loss, vaginal problems, gum disease, inability to climax, and weight gain. What man wants to be married to a woman that is moody, irritable, doesn’t want to have sex, and has gained weight?
Fourth, the Pill often increases the rates of infertility, which can very stressful on marriages, and can lead to grief and sometimes conflict. Also, the Pill causes many medical diseases and cancers, and any of these diseases can take a great toll on a family’s emotional heath, financial heath, and general well-being.
Fifth, the Pill also increases the divorce rate by making it easier for couples to cohabitate, or live together, prior to marriage. Unfortunately, cohabitating couples are 80% more likely to divorce than a couple who did not live together prior to marriage. Before the invention of the Pill, cohabitation was limited mainly to older, divorced couples who had past the peak of their fertility. However, the Pill brought improved fertility control and made cohabitation without the fear of pregnancy possible. Since contraception makes it easier to cohabitate prior to marriage, it also increases the divorce rate in this manner too.
Sixth, contraception makes it easier for couples to engage in premarital sex. Heaton (2002) finds a higher divorce rate among couples who engage in premarital sex, and David Larson, Ph.D., a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, states, “Couples not involved (with intercourse) before marriage and faithful during marriage are more satisfied with their current sex life and also with their marriage compared to those who were involved sexually before marriage.”
Seventh, if one can use contraceptives within marriage and before marriage to avoid pregnancy, then couples can also use contraception to avoid pregnancy during extramarital affairs. An extramarital affair can be particularly devastating to a marriage, and the advent of effective contraception (coupled with abortion) can make it that much more difficult for a spouse to “get caught” cheating. Consequently, contraceptives have also negatively impacted the divorce rate by making adultery easier, and adultery is devastating for marriages.
In fact, contraception has contributed to the increase in extramarital affairs in more than one way. In addition to preventing men from “getting caught” by eliminating the risk for pregnancy, contraception has encouraged increased numbers of sexual partners, and an earlier age at first intercourse. White and colleagues (2000) found that individuals that lost their virginity at a younger age, married someone besides the person they lost their virginity to, and had a higher number of sexual partners prior to marriage were more likely to have an extramarital affair. His data finds that men who first had sex before the age of 20 and men with more than 5 premarital sexual partners were significantly more likely to have an extramarital affair. White notes that his findings have been replicated in other studies in countries all over the globe, including Europe, the U.S. and Africa (Michael and colleagues, 1998; Johnson and Wadsworth, 1994; Mnyika and colleagues, 1997; Konings and colleagues, 1994; Bozon and Leridon, 1996).
Eighth and finally, Michael (1988) also notes that marriage becomes less attractive to individuals that want to be sexually active but do not want to have children. Since sexual activity is so readily available outside of marriage today, the benefits from marriage are fewer. Prior to the Pill, sexual intercourse was rare outside of marriage or engagement. Consequently, marriage has become less rewarding to some individuals that do not want children, because sexual activity is no longer unique to marriage. When the benefits of marriage decrease, the stability also decreases and the probability of divorce increases.
Therefore, contraception has had a profound effect on our marriages. Contraception now allows couples to disagree about if, when, and how many children they will have. It causes couples to be more rigid in their fertility preferences, and an unplanned pregnancy today is much more devastating than it was 40 years ago. If the Pill fails to prevent pregnancy, blame is often assigned to the woman. Contraception allows couples to delay childbearing, which delays couples from “growing up”. Contraception allows couples to cohabitate prior to marriage, which also increases the divorce rate. Additionally, the Pill and other contraceptives allow both premarital and extramarital sex, both of which also negatively effect marriages. Finally, sexual intercourse is now easily obtainable outside of marriage, making the benefits of marriage fewer. Therefore, it should comes as no surprise that couples who use contraception in their marriages have a 50% divorce rate, while those that follow Biblical principles and avoid contraception have only a 2% divorce rate. Sexual intercourse has been completely separated from childbearing, and an unplanned pregnancy is now considered an “accident” of sex.
Leridon (1981) states, “A new era of contraceptive practices has been ushered in, with the adoption of methods that are permanent in nature and totally dissociated from the sexual act. With the adoption of these methods, childbearing becomes a fully voluntary act, resulting from the decision to interrupt contraceptive practice that was started before marriage or at the time of marriage; it is no longer an unplanned event that is simply expected to happen some time during the first years of marriage. The reproductive and contraceptive revolution documented here is clearly still in progress. Its full implications cannot, therefore, as yet, be completely recognized or understood.”
For anyone who is interested in investigating alternatives to contraception, I recommend that couples try Natural Family Planning (NFP). Couples who use contraception have a 50% divorce rate. Couples who use NFP have only a 2% divorce rate. Additionally, NFP is completely consistent with the Biblical teaching against contraception. My favorite websites are:
The Couple to Couple League www.ccli.org
Family of the Americas Foundation www.familyplanning.net
