Divorce And Gender Research Paper

While divorce causes women great hardship, it can also be liberating for them. Before divorce became legal, for example, married women who encountered abuse—physical or psychological abuse, or the abuse of alcohol—or who were otherwise trapped in bad relationships, had no way to get out of their marriages. Nineteenth and twentieth century women’s movements fought for the right to divorce, which was legalized in the nineteenth century in the USA, and by various European countries throughout the twentieth century. The freedom to divorce is an important right for women, one still denied to wives in some countries (Goode 1993).

Even after the legalization of divorce, however, it took until the second half of the twentieth century for divorce to become socially acceptable in Western countries. States tried to discourage divorce until well into the twentieth century. To keep families together and to ‘protect’ women and the family, divorce was restricted through fault-based systems that remained in effect until the 1960s (Goode 1993). Under these systems, divorce could take place only if one party was able to prove the other guilty of adultery, cruelty, or other serious offenses. In the event that a divorce did occur, the wife was to be financially protected by her ex-husband. Since the state put in place no mechanisms to enforce this system, however, it did not in fact protect women. In the United States, most women never received alimony from their ex-husbands nor did most women obtain much property from a marriage, as most couples had little property to divide (O’Connell 1988). Thus, a major contradiction existed between the law’s assumption that the wife was dependent and should be protected in her domestic role, and the fact that most women received no such protection.

The last half of the twentieth century saw the stigma against divorce lifted and a rise in divorce rates in all North American and European countries (Goode 1993). The USA has one of the highest divorce rates—50 percent of all marriages now end in divorce (Stewart et al. 1997). Fundamental changes in divorce law in Europe and North America have also taken place. The most notable change has been the introduction of ‘no-fault’ divorce legislation. Most European countries have provisions for ending marriages without charges of fault, and in the USA by 1985 all states had passed ‘no fault’ laws, based on the principle of ‘irretrievable breakdown’ of the marriage, ‘incompatibility,’ or ‘irreconcilable differences,’ which permitted a divorce even if only one partner desired it (Kurz 1995). The no-fault system overturned the traditional view of women as dependents, stipulating that men are no longer responsible for the lifelong support of their former wives. In the USA, the new model looks at marriage as a partnership between husbands and wives, much like a business partnership. At divorce, women are expected to support themselves through paid work, supplemented by child support and an equitable division of assets from the marriage. Alimony, or lifelong financial support that in theory was available to a divorced wife, has been replaced by ‘spousal support’ awards of short duration, typically to the former wife, until she can begin supporting herself through paid work. Similarly women receive no special consideration in the division of property in the no-fault era. Property is to be divided equitably between divorcing spouses, much as one would divide property when dissolving a business.

No-fault divorce legislation with its gender-neutral assumptions has had benefits for women, particularly in overturning the stereotypic view of women as dependents of their husbands and substituting a view of men and women as equal. It has continued to leave women economically vulnerable, however. I will demonstrate below how divorce disadvantages women in the USA. While divorced women everywhere face economic difficulties, the USA provides an instructive case of what happens to women and children in a country that does not have adequate social supports for single mothers or a strong social welfare system that can mitigate the negative impact of divorce. The assumption behind current US policy, that divorced women would be able to support themselves adequately on their salaries and wages and on assets from their marriages, overlooks the realities of women’s lives. In the following section, I will examine current divorce policies, how they impact on women’s economic situation after divorce, and divorced women’s ability to secure assets from the marriage and ongoing support.

1. Economic Situation Of Divorced Women

In the USA, after divorce mothers’ standard of living goes down by at least a third while the incomes of divorced fathers go up by 15 percent (Hoffman and Duncan 1988). Mothers’ decreased standard of living affects not only themselves, but also their children, who typically live at the standard of living of their mothers. Why do divorced women have so much difficulty securing an adequate standard of living? First, many women cannot earn enough in the paid labor market to adequately support themselves and their children. Women make only 78 percent of what men do (Blau 1998) and many women are concentrated in low-paying jobs (England 1992).

Second, although women make an enormous life investment in their marriage, they are left on their own with little to show for it. Many divorced women receive no property of any value. The main asset of a couple is often the home, which in some cases is sold at the time of divorce so that each spouse can receive half its value. This usually leaves a woman and her children with smaller quarters and causes the children additional disruption. As well as having little property, only about one-sixth of divorced women have received spousal maintenance awards, most of which are of limited duration, are not large, and only half of which are paid in full (Weitzman 1985).

While divorced women have been unable to secure many assets from their marriages, in theory one resource remains available to the 85–90 percent of the divorced women who have physical custody of their children–child support. Most mothers are entitled to it, nearly all mothers need it, yet relatively few receive it: fewer than half of divorced women receive their full child support award (Roberts 1994). Child support can be critical for divorced mothers and their children, as well as other single mothers, to help them escape poverty. Researchers have established that regular child support payments would improve the standard of living of women and children and would lift a number of them out of poverty (Nichols-Caseboldt 1992).

Despite mothers’ demonstrated need for child support, however, the government has not implemented an adequate child-support system. First, child support awards have been very low. As child support is currently calculated and awarded, it covers less than half the costs of raising a child and typically is no more than 10 to 20 percent of a father’s income, never more than 30 percent (Weitzman 1985). Thus fathers contribute much less to the support of their children than do mothers. The problem is that child support awards are based on the costs of raising children in a two-income family; they do not take into account that divorced single mothers have many additional costs in establishing a new household. Further, career assets are not recognized as marital property. Thus the primary wage-earner, generally the husband, is permitted to keep most of the assets accumulated during his marriage and does not suffer financially at divorce, while the wife, who has invested in her family and in her husband’s career, is deprived of a return on her marital investment.

As for child support enforcement procedures, fortunately the Federal government and states have recently legislated tougher policies. The most important and effective reform for child support enforcement enacted to date is income withholding, a procedure by which an obligator’s (typically the father’s) payment is withheld from his paycheck by his employer, who then sends the money to the state child support agency (Roberts 1994). This will surely help raise the rate of child support collections. Problems will remain for women in improving their receipt of child support, however. Even with income withholding, estimates are that between 23 percent and 35 percent of women will still not receive child support (Garfinkel 1992). One problem is that there is no child support enforcement system for women whose exhusbands or former partners are self-employed. Collecting child support in interstate cases, which comprise 30 percent of all child support cases (Garfinkel 1992), is also a problem. There are new enforcement mechanisms for interstate cases; however the effectiveness of these new regulations depends on the ability of state child support agencies to take action on individual child support cases. Unfortunately, at this time state agencies are underfunded and labor under very large caseloads (Roberts 1994).

These problems with the child support system mean that the great majority of divorced mothers are in an economically dependent, vulnerable position. There are few social welfare programs or subsidies in the USA that enable them to live at an adequate standard of living outside of marriage. Some must resort to welfare, which provides a standard of living that is typically below the poverty level. Women who come from communities that have fewer resources and who experience discrimination, including many women of color, face even higher rates of poverty after divorce.

While there are problems with child support collection in many European countries as well, according to Glendon (1987) the legal system and public policies in the USA do less than those in any other Western country to help families cope with the consequences of divorce. By contrast, some European countries have social welfare systems that are typically much more supportive of single mothers and children. In the Scandanavian countries, the state actually pays child support to mothers and collects child support from fathers (Goode 1993). This policy is based on the belief that it is the state’s responsibility to ensure that children are adequately provided for.

2. Social Issues At Divorce

While divorce brings economic disadvantage for women and children, it can also have positive consequences. US researchers have noted that many men and women are positive about having divorced and report a greater sense of well-being after ending their marriages. Some researchers believe that divorce brings particular contentment to women, who gain an increased sense of competency and control (Riessman 1990). In Kurz’s (1995) study of divorced women, women’s feelings about their divorce were related to the circumstances of their marriages. The majority of women reported feeling positive about the ending of their marriages, particularly the substantial number of women whose husbands had been violent, had used drugs and alcohol, had been controlling, or had rarely been at home. For these women divorce was a welcome release from a bad marriage, an outcome consistent with the goals of the nineteenth century divorce reformers. The exception to this pattern was those women who had been left by their husbands against their wishes, for whom adjustment to divorce was more difficult.

While a number of couples report their satisfaction with being divorced, however, a certain percentage of them report conflict after divorce. Arendell (1995), in her study of divorced fathers, found that some fathers report harassing their former wives over issues of payment of child support, custody, and visitation. Forty percent of the men in her sample described incidents in which they had threatened explicitly or resorted to acts of violence against their former wives since the end of their marriages. In Kurz’s sample, 30 percent of women were fearful at some point during negotiations for child support, with similar percentages reporting fear during negotiations for custody and property. Those women who were fearful were most often those who had experienced violence during their marriages. Some of these women were afraid to demand child support. Some feminists have been concerned that new child support legislation mandating that mothers identify fathers and cooperate with child support enforcement could put some women with violent ex-husbands at risk (Kurz 1995). These advocates argue that, for this reason, women who have experienced violence should not be forced to cooperate with child support enforcement agencies against their will.

The fear of harm or violence can have other negative consequences for women. In the case of negotiating for custody and child support, some fathers threaten to sue for custody even when they don’t really want it, as a way to get mothers to reduce their demands for child support. In response, some mothers forfeit their right to child support in order to secure custody of their children. Recent changes in custody law make these kinds of suits possible. A presumption of joint custody has replaced the maternal presumption in the determination of child custody. Fathers’ rights groups in particular have agitated for more rights to participation in their children’s lives and many feminists have also hoped that fathers would become more involved with their children after divorce (Kurz 1995).

At the present time, most divorced parents have some type of joint custody agreement, most often joint legal custody mandating that both parents should be involved in major decisions about the child’s life and in a small number of cases, joint physical custody, where the child goes back and forth between the mother’s and father’s residences. While joint custody can promote shared parenting that is good for the child, there has been some debate about whether joint physical custody is best for children (Maccoby and Mnookin 1992). For divorced mothers, however, joint custody can be disadvantageous. In many such custody agreements, children end up spending more time with their mother. Since fathers with joint custody agreements do not pay child support, however, mothers and their children then lose financially in this arrangement (Mason 1999). In addition, in the minority of cases when fathers actually do want custody, or at least sue for it, they have a greater likelihood of getting custody than the mothers (Mason 1999, p. 22).

Conflict is not only stressful for former spouses and financially disadvantageous for most women, but it can also have a negative impact on children. Scholars have disagreed on whether or not divorce harms children. Some argue that it does, while others claim that being a child of divorce is no more difficult than being a child of an intact marriage characterized by high levels of conflict (Johnston 1994). One thing scholars agree on, however, is that conflict between spouses during marriage and after divorce can be harmful for children (Stewart et al. 1997).

3. Conclusion

Gendered laws, procedures, and practices play a critical role in divorce and have a negative impact on the economic situation of divorced women and children. At the same time, the discourse on divorce and the assumptions underlying much divorce law are gender-neutral. Unfortunately, some researchers and policymakers have proposed divorce policies that ignore the gender-based aspects of divorce. They advocate policies to increase commitment to marriage and make it more difficult for people to get divorced— mandatory waiting periods before divorce, mandatory marriage counseling or marriage education, and the reintroduction of fault-based divorce (Popenoe 1996).

Women’s rights advocates view such proposals with alarm. They favor strengthening child support enforcement and increasing child support awards. They also argue for supplementing private support with strong public measures such as are found in the Scandanavian countries, measures which provide guaranteed child support. Many also argue that the state should promote mothers’ self-sufficiency through job training, higher incomes, subsidized day care and health care, and family allowances. Only such comprehensive measures, they argue, can reduce the high levels of poverty among divorced women and children.

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