These stats are from America, so may not completely apply to other places, but makes for an interesting food-for-thought discussion.
Sources are U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, and various research projects done by psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists.
I've added in supporting background info to some of the 'signs' that seem a bit random.
- If you're a woman who got married before the age of eighteen, your marriage faces a 48 percent likelihood of divorce within ten years.
(Background: Age matters. Study after study shows that the younger the married couple, the riskier the bond. The risk drops to 40 percent for women who married at age eighteen or nineteen, drops further to 29 percent for women who married at age 20 to 24, and drops even further to 24 percent for women who married at age 25 or older.)
- If you're a woman who wants a child - either a first child or an additional child - much more strongly than your spouse does, your marriage is more than twice as likely to end in divorce as the marriages of couples who agree on how much they do or don't want a child.
(Background: "One of the patterns we consistently see is that women tend to be more discontented in relationships than men are," says Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, "and women are the ones who tend to initiate separations and divorces." Here's one reason why.)
- If you have two sons, you face a 36.9 percent likelihood of divorce, but if you have two daughters, the likelihood rises to 43.1 percent.
(Background: These findings by Columbia University economist Kristin Mammen echo other studies linking the births of girls with elevated divorce rates. A bright spot in Mammen's research, however wan, is that after parents divorce, child-support payments show no gender disparity?girls receive no less child support than boys.)
- If you're a man with high basal testosterone, you're 43 percent more likely to get divorced than men with low testosterone levels.
- If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, you are 22.7 percent more likely to divorce before that child turns eight years old than parents of a child without ADHD.
- If you are currently married but have cohabited with a lover other than your current spouse, you are slightly more than twice as likely to divorce than someone who has never cohabited.
- If you didn't smile for photographs early in life, your marriage is five times more likely to end in divorce than if you smiled intensely in early photographs.
(Background: Two tests, the first involving college yearbook photos and the second involving miscellaneous photos taken during participants' youths, yielded this finding. "People who are optimistic - and that's what smiles tend to show in childhood - find it easier to get along with people, including the people they're married to. Optimistic types also find it easier to put up with periods in life that might be difficult.")
- If your child has died after the twentieth week of pregnancy, during labor, or soon after labor, you are 40 percent more likely to divorce than if you had not lost a child.
(Background: Few catastrophes throw relationships into chaos like the death of a child. Distraught parents blame each other, says Susan Pease Gadoua, author of Stronger Day by Day: Reflections for Healing and Rebuilding After Divorce. When a child dies right before or after being born, "the woman who was carrying the child often gets told that she should have 'taken better care' of the child. What's really happening is that these couples haven't dealt adequately with their grief and they can't form a bond anymore because this huge ball of grief is standing in the way like a barricade.")
- If you're a woman who has recently been diagnosed with cancer or multiple sclerosis, your marriage is six times more likely to end in divorce than if your husband had been diagnosed with those diseases instead.
(Background: A study of "partner abandonment" revealed that husbands are six times more likely to leave sick wives than wives are to leave sick husbands. "Men have a much harder time being caretakers than women do," Sember observes. "Men find it hard to juggle that kind of responsibility, particularly if the wife has always been the one to fill that role." Moreover, "often women are more able to take time off from work to care for an ill spouse than men are.")
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If you're a Caucasian woman and you're separated from your spouse, there's a 98 percent chance that you'll be divorced within six years of that separation; if you're a Hispanic woman, the likelihood is 80 percent; if you're an African-American woman, the likelihood is 72 percent.
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If you're a dancer or choreographer, you face a 43.05 percent likelihood of divorce, compared with mathematicians, who face a 19.15 percent likelihood, and animal trainers, who face a 22.5 percent likelihood.
(Background: Radford University industrial psychologist Michael Aamodt devised a formula for calculating the probabilities of marital success and failure based on the career of one of the spouses.)
- If you're a farmer or rancher, you face only a 7.63 percent likelihood of divorce, joined by other low-risk occupations such as nuclear engineers, who face a 7.29 percent likelihood, and optometrists, who face a mere 4.01 percent likelihood.
(Background: In the Radford University study calculating divorce probabilities associated with occupations, the absolute safest marriages are those of agricultural engineers, who face a minuscule 1.78 percent chance of divorce.)
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If either you or your spouse have suffered a brain injury, your marriage faces a 17 percent chance of ending in divorce.
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If you're an African-American woman, your first marriage has a 47 percent likelihood of ending in divorce within ten years; for Hispanic women, the likelihood is 34 percent; for Caucasian women, it's 32 percent; for Asian women, it's 20 percent.
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If you're a woman serving actively in the military, your marriage is 250 percent more likely to end in divorce than that of a man serving actively in the military.
(Background: A Rand Corporation study on Families Under Stress found that while 6.6 percent of military women's marriages dissolved, only 2.6 percent of military men's did.)
So.........let's have your thoughts.......