![]() Thus, children may be both the cause of divorce and a key stabilizer of marriage. Realizing “divorce can affect children negatively” and hoping that their children will grow up healthily, some emotionally damaged couples may choose to sustain their marriage (Thornton, 1977). Moreover, after having children, pressure from social norms and cultural traditions may grow to further discourage divorce. And the mutual dependence or “organic unity” generated during the process of rearing children is beneficial to the stability of a marriage (Morgan et al., 1988 Durkheim, 2000). Fei Xiaotong ( 1999) also pointed out that, as a medium binding couples biologically and psychologically, children create a common task that has to be undertaken by parents. Different from other forms of marriage capital, children naturally belong to both spouses thus, the more children a couple has, the lower possibility of divorce. ( 1977) argue that children are a significant investment in a couple’s marriage. Nonetheless, this explanation clashes with various empirical studies.įirstly, several studies have shown that the divorce risk decreases significantly after giving birth to children, and the more children a couple has, the less likely it is that they will divorce (Thornton, 1977 Heaton, 1990 Waite & Lillard, 1991 Xu et al., 2013). Therefore, from the perspective of the family life cycle theory, it is the dynamic change of the number of children and the children’s age with the duration of the marriage that causes the inverted U-shape divorce pattern. As grown-ups, children live independently, allowing parents to return to the lover’s world, which then may increase their satisfaction with marriage and reduce the risk of divorce (Glenn, 1975 Waite & Lillard, 1991). However, as children grow older and become increasingly independent, the time and energy needed to rear them gradually decreases (Heaton, 1990). ![]() ![]() This may weaken the quality of their marriage and increase the risk of divorce (Waite & Lillard, 1991). The more children a couple has, the more time and energy they must spend on their children and, as a result, they have less time for themselves (Rollins & Galligan, 1978). However, the birth of the first child may break the honeymoon period because both the wife and the husband need to adjust to their new roles as parents after having children. The time from getting married to having the first child is the “honeymoon” period the marriage quality of this period is high so the divorce risk is low. The first theoretical approach suggests that the inverted U-shape divorce pattern reflects the family life cycle, especially the influence of children. With regard to the inverted U-shape divorce pattern, there have been three different theoretical explanations. Studies on Western societies have shown that the divorce risk function has an inverted U-shape curve, indicating that divorce risk first gradually increases according to the duration of marriage and then decreases steadily after reaching its peak (Schoen, 1975 Andersson, 1997 Lyngstad, 2004). By comparing four cohorts divided by marriage year, we find that the proportion of divorced couples has increased over time and the slope of the risk function for divorced couples has increased rapidly.ĭivorce pattern is a dynamic describing the changing divorce risk for a marriage. However, the curve must come down at the end since the majority of the population does not divorce. ![]() Split-population model shows that divorce risk for divorced couples increase linearly with marriage duration. ![]() Family life cycle theory and natural evolvement theory are not supported by the data however, population heterogeneity theory fits the data quite well. Family life cycle theory, natural evolvement theory, and population heterogeneity theory provide three different perspectives on interpreting the “inverted-U” shape divorce pattern. We find an inverted U-shape pattern in the divorce risk for Chinese marriages with the peak coming earlier over time. Drawing from the data collected in the 2010 China Family Panel Study (CFPS) baseline survey, this paper studies the changing divorce pattern in Chinese marriages as a whole and for four cohorts. ![]()
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