What Are They Thinking? A National Study of Stability and Change in Divorce Ideation

• Author: Sarah M. Allen,Kelly M. Roberts,Adam M. Galovan,Steven M. Harris,Sage E. Allen,David G. Schramm,Alan J. Hawkins
• Date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12299
• Published date: 01 December 2017

What Are They Thinking? A National Study of

Stability and Change in Divorce Ideation

ALAN J. HAWKINS*

ADAM M. GALOVAN

†

STEVEN M. HARRIS

‡

SAGE E. ALLEN*

SARAH M. ALLEN

§

KELLY M. ROBERTS

¶

DAVID G. SCHRAMM**

This study reports on a nationally representative sample of married individua ls ages

25–50 (N=3,000) surveyed twice (1 year apart) to investigate the phenomenon of divorce

ideation, or what people are thinking when they are thinking about divorce. Twenty-eight

percent of respondents had thought their marriage was in serious trouble in the past but

not recently. Another 25% had thoughts about divorce in the last 6 months. Latent Class

Analysis revealed three distinct groups among those thinking about divorce at Time 1: soft

thinkers (49%), long-term-serious thinkers (45%), and conflicted thinkers (6%) . Yet, divorce

ideation was not static; 31% of Time 1 thinkers were not thinking about it 1 year later (and

36% of nonthinkers at Time 1 were thinking about it 1 year later). Also, Latent Transition

Analysis revealed 49% of Time 1 long-term-serious thinkers, 56% of soft thinkers,and 51%

of conflicted thinkers had shifted groups at Time 2, mostly in the direction of less and softer

thinking about divorce. Overall, divorce ideation is common but dynamic, and it is not nec-

essarily an indication of imminent marital dissolution.

Keywords: Divorce; Divorce Decision-Making; Divorce Ideation; Latent Class Analysis;

Latent Transition Analysis

Fam Proc 56:852–868, 2017

Divorce is one of the most studied topics in the social sciences (Amato, 2010). Research-

ers place the overall divorce rate at about 50%, although the risk of divorce generally

declines with the length of the marriage. However, the risk appears to have increased

recently for older and longer married couples (Kennedy & Ruggles, 2014; Stepler, 2017).

The effects of divorce probably have been the most studied issue in this field. For instance,

a large body of research documents the heightened risks to the wellbeing of more than 1

million children each year who experience parental divorce (Amato & Anthony, 2014).

*Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

†

University of Edmonton, Edmonton, AB.

‡

University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN.

§

Montana State University, Bozeman, MT.

¶

University of North Texas, Denton, TX.

**Utah State University, Logan, UT.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alan J. Hawkins, 2092-D JFSB, Brigham

Young University, Provo, UT 84602. E-mail: hawkinsa@byu.edu or Adam M. Galovan, 321 Human Ecology

Building Edmonton, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2N1. E-mail: adam.galovan@ualberta.ca.

The first two authors made equal contributions to the manuscript.

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Family Process, Vol. 56, No. 4, 2017 ©2017 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12299

Despite a large body of research on divorce, there are still important gaps in our under-

standing, as Amato (2010) pointed out in his decade-review article. For instance, little

research has illuminated the ambiguous state of being married but thinking about divorce

(Allen & Hawkins, 2017; Amato, 2010). This is an important gap because we know that

thinking about divorce, or divorce ideation, positively predicts poorer marital quality and

subsequent dissolution (Amato & Booth, 1997). How many people are thin king about

divorce? How frequent and serious are their thoughts? How static or stable is their think-

ing? It is surprising that we do not have good answers to these questions given the number

of couples who seek help specifically for relationship problems (Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, &

Markman, 2009). Knowing more about the thoughts and experiences of those who are

thinking about divorce will benefit practitioners who now are at a disadvantage to assist

highly distressed couples where divorce may be imminent, or even moderately distressed

couples where the possibility of divorce looms over the horizon.

There was some research interest in divorce ideation and decision-making several dec-

ades ago (Albrecht & Kunz, 1980; Donovan & Jackson, 1990; Kitson & Langlie, 1984).

Booth and White (1980) reported that 10% of Nebraskan married adults had thought

about a divorce in the past two years. But this figure is isolated to one Midwestern state

and is nearly four decades old. The past few decades have been mostly a latency period on

divorce ideation research. Broman’s (2002) study was one exception. Using a national

probability sample, he found that younger people, Blacks, and parents were more likely to

be thinking about divorce. But this study had only a single item tapping into divorce idea-

tion (“I sometimes think of divorcing my spouse”), yielding a relatively thin view of the

phenomenon, and the data now are nearly two decades old. Vaughan (1990) retrospec-

tively explored turning points of marital uncoupling and proposed a universal stage model

for ending a marriage. But her sample did not include individuals who decided to remain

in the marriage, thus missing the perspectives of those who decided not to divorce. More-

over, this small study now is nearly three decades old.

Recently, a handful of studies have given scholarly attention to thinking and decision-

making about divorce. Two reports documented evidence of ambivalence even among some

who have filed for divorce, suggesting that their thinking and decision-making efforts were

still incomplete (Doherty, Harris, & Didericksen, 2016; Doherty, Willoughby, & Peterson,

2011). These researchers found that among individuals attending a mandated divorcing

parents class in Minnesota, about two-thirds reported that they were done with the mar-

riage and wanted a divorce, but about 25% said they were ambivalent about the divorce,

and about 8% did not want it. Doherty, Harris, and Wilde (2016) have developed a treat-

ment protocol called “Discernment Counseling” specifically designed to assist directionally

uncertain couples achieve greater clarity and confidence about the future of their marriage.

Further documentation of ambiguity and confusion about divorce decision-making is evi-

dent in recent qualitative work (Fackrell, 2012; Kanewischer & Harris, 2015; Plauche,

Marks, & Hawkins, 2016).For instance, Fackrell (2012) interviewed a small number of indi-

viduals who were thinking about divorce and foundthat the decision-making process is usu-

ally chaotic and confusing. She discovered that an unsatisfying relationship by itself does

not present a straightforward path to divorce, because the marriage has its own considera-

tions aside from the personal relationship. Similarly, Harris, Crabtree, Bell, Allen, and

Roberts (2017) interviewed individuals who were thinking about divorce and discovered

that participants reported lacking clarity and confidence in their decision-making ability

about divorce. These qualitative studies, of course, have their limitations. They cannot pro-

vide a demographic outline of divorce ideation; quantitative research with a nationally rep-

resentative sample is needed for that. Moreover, as Allen and Hawkins (2017) recently

pointed out, phenomenological, retrospective interview methods can be biased because

interviewees’ needs for sense-making leads them to report their experiences in ways that

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