Millennials, Generation Xers prone to divorce

New York

MILLENNIALS, enjoy your nuptials as the summer wedding season hits its stride. Back home, your folks may be hiring divorce lawyers. The statistic that half of all marriages fail, long whispered by wedding guests and worried over by reluctant brides and grooms, has garnered some new support. If current behaviour continues, 52.7 per cent of marriages will end in tears, University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen concluded, based on recent survey data.

That estimate might surprise some, especially if you look at recent trends. The media have regularly sought to debunk the notion of a 50 per cent divorce rate, and the new conventional wisdom has been that Americans get divorced less often than in the past. After all, the official number of divorces according to the US government has dropped, both since its peak in the 1980s and more recently.