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Family Appendix D: Divorce

In the years between World War II and the oil price shock of 1973, [the employment of women] accelerated in the United States because of increases in the demand for female workers in the service sector, rising real wages of employed women, and better control over fertility. Since 1973, stagnant wages of male workers and sweeping changes in attitudes about the employment of women have played an important role. The great increase in female employment has altered, perhaps permanently, men's and women's roles in the family. Employment has made many married women less dependent on their husbands for support, and this development, in turn, may have increased the likelihood that unhappy couples will resort to divorce. Greater employment opportunities may have induced many single women to wait longer before marrying. At the same time, improved contraception - another postwar development - may have influenced the trends by allowing couples to control the timing of childbearing, thus reducing unwanted births and helping women organize their work lives. Together, these society-wide changes in women's work lives and reproductive lives have promoted the acceleration of the long-term rise in divorce and the long-term fall in fertility that has characterized the United States since the mid-nineteenth century.

(Cherlin, pp. 62-63)

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