3 ms·
> espousing the idea that stable marriages can't be happy I don't see anyone saying this. Instead the claim is: when divorce is a cultural taboo, people are mo
by jacobolus 6y ago
> espousing the idea that stable marriages can't be happy
I don't see anyone saying this. Instead the claim is: when divorce is a cultural taboo, people are more likely to stick in an unhappy or even abusive marriage. This claim seems pretty uncontroversial, but at any rate it is a positive claim (not normative) whose accuracy can be judged by empirical data.
- dash2 6y agoAgreed on the second point. There's certainly evidence that looser divorce laws allow people to leave unhappy marriages [1], though there's also evidence that these laws made marriage less stable and harmed children, so there are trade-offs [2, but see also 3]. I'm less sure of evidence that cultural taboos have the same effect. Here's some correlational work across countries on divorce norms and gender equality within marriage; this doesn't specifically address violence, though, and it doesn't control for other aspects of culture which probably covary with attitudes to divorce [4]. [1] Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J., 2006. Bargaining in the shadow of the law: Divorce laws and family distress. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(1), pp.267-288. [2] Gruber, J., 2004. Is making divorce easier bad for children? The long-run implications of unilateral divorce. Journal of Labor Economics, 22(4), pp.799-833. [3] Wolfers, J., 2006. Did unilateral divorce laws raise divorce rates? A reconciliation and new results. American Economic Review, 96(5), pp.1802-1820. [4] Yodanis, C., 2005. Divorce culture and marital gender equality: A cross-national study. Gender & society, 19(5), pp.644-659.