Marital Apocalypse or Divorced from Reality?

The followers of a prominent radio preacher are preparing for the impending demise of the world this weekend, but it's safe to say that most of us still are paying more attention to another cataclysm that some are taking as a sign of the End Times, at least as far as boomer marriage is concerned.

Indeed, our collective preoccupation with news of the split between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, now in week two, has reached such awe-inspiring, almost Biblical proportions that the number of Google hits for "Schwarzenegger+Shriver+split" grew by 700,000 during a single 12-hour period from Thursday evening to this morning alone. The last surge has been fueled by the revelation of the existence of a Schwarzenegger love child, who is being obsessively stalked by television news crews and photographers. Equally disturbing, as I alluded to in a previous blog post, many in the media and across the blogosphere are taking what, at least at this point, appears to be the latest impending celebrity divorce as an omen that an entire generation's marital bliss is endangered.

But what does this all mean? Far be it from me, a lowly blogger, to tell you. But here are some thoughts and factoids to ponder.

1. Overall, divorce actually is on the decline in America. This newly released report by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the divorce rate peaked around 1980 and actually has been dropping over the last 15 years, apparently in part because couples now tend to be older when they marry than in the past. CNN did this story analyzing the findings.

2. Nevertheless, there is something to the widespread assumption that baby boomers -- particularly the older ones -- are the Divorce Generation, according to this 2010 study. But many boomers also seem eager to give matrimony another try. The researchers found that those between 55 and 64 had a greater likelihood to marry two or three times, as well as to remarry rather than just remaining separated or divorced, than those 65 and older. From Rutgers University social scientist Deborah Carr, here's an interesting 2010 article on late-in-life divorce.

3. The chances of getting divorced seem to depend, to a certain degree, upon where you live. This 2009 Pew Research Center study gives some credibility to the old George Strait song "All My Ex's Live in Texas" (which, BTW, you can see Strait perform live in this YouTube clip). The Lone Star State is home to more thrice-married adults -- 428,000 women and 373,000 men -- than any other state. Percentagewise, though, neighboring Oklahoma, where 10 percent of all ever-married adults have had at least three spouses, is the leader in serial monogamy.

4. If you want your marriage to last, it may help your chances if you move to Maryland or Washington, DC. At least according to this news story by a DC-based TV station. While those locales are a hotbed of political intrigue, they have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole.

5. The percentage of Americans who think divorce is morally acceptable has risen sharply. Their ranks grew from just 59 percent in 2001 to 70 percent in 2008, according to this 2008 Gallup poll. (But there's some bad news in the survey for the Terminator: Only 55 percent said that having a child outside of marriage is morally okay.)

6. Divorce actually can be contagious -- not when a divorced person sneezes or shakes hands, but within social networks. That's the conclusion of a 2010 University of California-San Diego study by political science professor James H. Fowler, who has developed a theory of social contagion, in which behaviors and emotions spread through groups of acquaintances.

7. Wealthier couples actually are less likely to divorce than middle-class Americans. Costly splits between super-rich couples, such as the ones listed in this CNBC article, get our attention, but they are less common than separations by ordinary folks, according to this 2010 study by the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values.

8. Divorced men tend to pay more attention to their bodies and become more physically fit than men who remain married and don't have to look for a new partner. That's the finding of a 2010 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, which looked at 9,000 American men and women over an eight-year period. Divorced women, in contrast, tend to gain weight, the study found.

9. On the other hand, there's also a growing trend in which divorced women have "revenge surgery" in an effort to outdo their exes in the looks department. At least that's if we believe this ABC Good Morning America segment.

10. Let's just blame it all on TV. Given how influential television is on our perceptions, I can't help but suspect that the initial seeds of the present fixation on boomer divorce actually may have been sewn two years ago, when Betty Draper rushed off to Reno for a quickie divorce in the season finale of Mad Men. Since then, TV producers and writers have latched onto divorce as a leitmotif. The Huffington Post reported in March that no fewer than eight new divorce-themed TV pilots have been green-lighted by network executives. Those cable-box remote-clutching sociologists as Jezebel.com also recently documented a disturbing reality TV divorce curse that dates back as far as 1973, when Bill and Pat Loud of PBS's pioneering documentary series An American Family hit the rocks. And don't forget that Lynette, the last of the four female protagonists on Desperate Housewives to remain married, now seems on the verge of dumping Tom.