"Rogers reports that 'increases in husbands' income were associated with lower odds of divorce,' while-in marked contrast-'each $1,000 increase in wives' actual income ... or each percentage point increase in wives' income [as a percentage of total household income] increases the annual odds of divorce by approximately 2.5 to 3%.'

Rogers further highlights data indicating that 'the risk of divorce is highest when wives' contributions [to household income] are similar to their husbands'.'"

(Source: "Two Equal Paychecks, One Happy Divorce Lawyer," New Research, June 2004, an abstract of Stacy J. Rogers, "Dollars, Dependency, and Divorce: Four Perspectives on the Role of Wives' Income," Journal of Marriage and the Family 66 [2004]: 59-74.)

"'That was the best argument same-sex marriage advocates had: "Where were you when no-fault divorce went through?"'" said Allan Carlson, a conservative scholar who runs a family-studies center in Rockford, Ill. "Any thoughtful defender of marriage has to say, "You're right. We were asleep at the switch in the '60s and '70s."'"

Carlson hopes the same-sex marriage debate will encourage a broader national conversation.

'For the first time in about 50 years we are honestly looking at the state of marriage in America, and what we have allowed to happen to it," he said. "I hope the conservative side will do a little soul-searching and look for ways to rebuild traditional marriage into something stronger.'"

(Source: David Crary, "Conservatives Urge Closer Look at Marriage," The Washington Post [Associated Press], November 21, 2004; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3222-2004Nov21.html .)

The sexual revolution was billed as a movement to liberate women from the constraints of patriarchy and marriage, yet divorce continues to render far greater negative consequences for women than for men. Likewise, parental divorce renders greater negative consequences for daughters than for sons, according to researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who studied the impact of various home environments on adolescent emotional development.

Using data from the 1993 Utrecht Study of Adolescent Development, a longitudinal panel study, the Dutch professors studied a sample of 2,636 parent-child pairs to explore the emotional adjustment of Dutch young people, ages 12-24, in four different family types: divorced families and two-parent families ranked according to high-, medium-, and low-marital quality. They found that adolescents who grew up in "post-divorce" families, as well as "maritally distressed" intact families, experienced significantly less well-being than adolescents living with parents with medium- and high-marital quality.

Nevertheless, daughters were found to be affected by parental marital quality and divorce more than were sons. The mean emotional adjustment of girls was lower than that of boys in all four categories. Growing up in a divorced family was found to be "especially detrimental" for daughters, as "parental resources" were able to offset the negative effect of divorce on the emotional adjustments of sons.

In addition, while adolescent well-being declined for both boys and girls as they grew older in all four family categories, the decline was actually greater for girls than for boys. The inverse association between well-being and age did not vary by marital quality or divorce, indicating that children do not outgrow the negative effects of divorce or low-marital quality. In fact, the researchers found just the opposite: that the effects of divorce on adolescent children were long term.

The study also found that low-marital quality, often a predictor of a pending divorce, yielded similar effects on adolescent girls as did divorce itself, suggesting that "the process of negative divorce effects may indeed be at work long before a possible divorce takes place."