Coming to South American countries, divorce rates increased from 0.21 to 0.7 in Mexico, from 0.17 to 1.9 in Costa Rica, from 0.36 to 1.2 in Trinidad, and from 0.28 to 0.7 in Jamaica (Lamb, 196). These figures show that this phenomenon is some what universal.
Lamb has listed the reasons for this social change as “delays in age at first marriage, rising non-marital cohabitation, and increases in non-marital births” which are again caused by “women’s growing education and economic independence, a decline in religious influence, an increase in individualism, and a corresponding decline in communalism (196). The risk factors that bring about a divorce as identified by researchers also constitute a very long list (qtd. In Lamb, 197). This list includes, factors like:
Marrying a teenager, being poor, having a low level of education, having no children from the marriage, bringing children from a previous union into the marriage, being in a second or higher order marriage, cohabiting prior to marriage, having no religious affiliation, not sharing the same religion with one’s spouse, living in an urban area, and growing up in a household without two continuously married parents (Lamb, 197-198).
Other findings of social science research in this regard have suggested that education has a positive association with the risk of divorce (qtd. by Lamb, 198). Many predictive factors of divorce have been identified as well. These comprise of “frequent arguments, repeated expressions of negative affect, domestic violence, infidelity, and low levels of emotional support, commitment, love and trust between spouses (qtd. by Lamb, 198).
When we look into the consequences of divorce on adults, many findings are there to suggest that divorced individuals are in general having lower psychological health and physical health as compared to continuously married people (qtd. by Lamb, 199). This phenomenon can be