According to Census 2000, there were 21,560,308 divorced adults living in the United States in the year 2000: 12,305,294 were women (57%), and 9,255,014 men (43%).

(Source: The United States Census Bureau, "DP-2. Profile of Selected Social Characteristics: 2000; Census 2000 Summary File 3 (SF 3) - Sample Data," http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_DP2_geo_id=01000US.html.)

"From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history. A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring a stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future-that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure-these are not only to be expected, they are virtually inevitable."

(Source: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Family and Nation, Harcourt Brace, 1986.)

Men who remain married are able to handle workplace stress much better than men who divorce.  According to a team of researchers from the State University of New York-Oswego and the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, chronic work stress poses a lethal threat for divorced men, but not their married coworkers.

Publishing their findings in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the research team identifies the protective effects of wedlock by analyzing health and mortality records for 12,866 men in eighteen US cities.  Their analysis of the data establishes that "for divorced men, an increasing number of work stressors during the [period of study] was associated with a significantly increased risk for death due to all causes" (Relative Risk of 1.69; p = .03).  In contrast, among the married men in the study "work stress was not significantly associated with an increased risk for death (based on linear trend) due to all causes."  "The accumulation of different work stressors," comment the authors of the new study,  "did not affect the mortality experience of those who remained married throughout the [study period], suggesting that remaining married in midlife has protective effects in the face of adverse experiences at work."

The researchers interpret their results in the context of "international studies [that] show that divorced men have higher mortality rates than married men."  "Divorce," they suggest, "may have a negative effect on mental health, including increased negative affect, reduced sense of purpose and identity, and altered relationships with children and community, all of which may have physiological costs."