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Strollerderby
Staying Together: A Gen X Thing?
Is your marriage better than your mom's?
My husband and I have had better weeks. Truth be told, we’ve had better years. Seven of them. Six months past our seventh anniversary, I have a painful new understanding of what the “seven-year-itch” is all about.
That’s hardly surprising. As I noted months ago, statistically speaking my marriage is doomed. I’m a child of divorce, married to a man on his second marriage. We’re a blended family. I’m a survivor of sexual violence. These are all risk factors for divorce, even before you start talking about who eats the last of the cereal and puts the empty box back in the cupboard.
We may have one statistic on our side though: our generation. The divorce rate has been falling steadily for decades. The divorce rate for college-educated Gen X mamas like myself is a mere 16%, according to Tara Parker-Pope’s wonderful book For Better.
Why are our marriages surviving when our parents’ didn’t? Part of the answer lies with the gains of feminism. Women have more power at home and at work. More equitable marriages tend to be happier ones, driving fewer women to seek out greener pastures. That matters a lot, since women initiate 75% of divorces.
We’re also survivors of our parents generation of broken marriages. Many of us learned from their mistakes, and as a generation we’ve gotten better at marriage. New science shows us what works and what doesn’t in relationships, and we’re applying those lessons in our own lives.
For instance, I might be tempted to roll my eyes when my husband forgets to pay a bill for the fourth time. But I restrain the urge because I know from John Gottman‘s marriage research that eye-rolling is a major symptom of a failing marriage. Rather than just pegging Wednesday nights as date nights, my husband and I have date nights and household meetings, so we can keep the messy business side of running a family off the table when we go out for dinner.
Will these new and improved marriages stand the test of time? I’d like to believe in a happy ending for mine, even though I know I’m betting against the odds. My peers’ marriages are, statistically, faring better than our parents’ ones did. That suggests something is working. Is it science, a cultural shift, new relationship skills or just luck in love?
What do you think? What holds your marriage together? What pulls it apart? Has your marriage outlasted your parents’?
Photo: Ed Yourdon
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Steph commented on Feb 04 11 at 1:29 pmMy husband’s and my parents are all still married, even though many of our peers come from families with divorced parents. I think that for us, because we never ever assumed we would get married (I NEVER had a “dream wedding” scenario as a kid – it just wasn’t part of the awareness or language of my friends/peers as we grew up), meeting each other and getting married (pretty quickly) was what we really wanted to do and not to do with ANY expectations or pressure from anyone else. We’d already moved in together and bought tickets to move overseas together and we thought it would be nice to get married. And so far, it has been.
Rebecca W commented on Feb 04 11 at 1:40 pmPersonally, my marriage fared much worse than my parents. But what strikes me is the question of what is the difference in the marriage rate between then and now? Less than 50% of my friends have even been married.
Meagan commented on Feb 04 11 at 1:49 pmI would think some of that difference has to do with what men are like? If our mothers were the warriors of feminism, our father’s were the somewhat clueless chumps who couldn’t keep up with changing times (I think my parents and I are both half a generation late to fit into these molds… I was born in 81, with feminism well established). So it’s not just that marriage is more equatable, it’s that our husbands expect it to be that way, as opposed to us fighting for every inch. If women initiate 75% of divorce, I’d wonder how many men at the start of feminism even understood what was happening.
Gretchen Powers commented on Feb 04 11 at 2:13 pmMaybe the divorces have just not happened yet? Don’t many folks get divorced a little later…deeper into their 40s, 50s, etc. I mean, many of us just got married 5-10 years ago. That’s not to say I think I am headed for divorce. Many things about my husband drive me crazy and I let him know it. I also let him know I am just not the divorcing kind and he literally would have to be a felon for me to divorce him. There’s just not that much worth uprooting our life and our kid’s life over…and I don’t hang my own personal happiness on what he does. He can make me happy sometimes, but I realize that my happiness is ultimately my responsibility–maybe other women my age have come to understand that, too, which could contribute to couples staying together…
Gretchen Powers commented on Feb 04 11 at 2:15 pmAlso, my parents are still married and his stayed married til his dad died…I do think the modeling helps. We just really wouldn’t know how divorce “works”, once a family has been established.
Sierra Black commented on Feb 04 11 at 2:18 pm@ Gretchen: 16% is the 10-years-in divorce rate for college-educated women who married in the 90s. The 10 year divorce rate has been dropping every year since the 70s.
Gretchen Powers commented on Feb 04 11 at 2:23 pmugh….another book I am going to have to buy…it sounds interesting
Jenna commented on Feb 07 11 at 2:40 pmOn the other (or maybe the same, I don’t know) hand I’ve read lots of other research pointing out that less of us are bothering to get married at all. It makes sense that that since we no longer have this pressure to marry that people would only do it if they were committed and really wanted it.
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