ANNANDALE, Va. — A new study shows the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world. Some may be surprised to learn that it’s not newlyweds that are calling it quits. Baby boomers are keeping divorce lawyers busy.
Margie White and her ex-husband Dick were college sweethearts.
“I met Dick the first week of my freshman year of college,” White said.
They eventually married and had two sons. Over their 37 year marriage, the two grew apart.
“I’d said to Dick a couple of times over the course of our marriage, one of us will get a second chance,” she said. “I mean, we really did struggle.”
The pair divorced in 2011. Both say the divorce was amicable. Dick now lives a few miles away, but still helps out with things around the house he once shared with Margie.
Stories like the Whites are becoming more common. In the last 20 years, the divorce rate for people over the age of 50 has doubled. In 2009, 1 out of 4 people were divorced. A study done at Bowling Green University may shed some light on what’s causing the rise in divorces.
“Increasingly, these are baby boomers,” said Susan Brown with Bowling Green State University . “They were the first generation to come of age when we saw the rapid acceleration in pre-marital cohabitation and divorce in the 1970s and the early 1980s and we know that remarriages are more likely to end in divorce than first marriages.”
Other factors also include longer life spans and people’s changing ideas about what makes a good marriage.
The Whites say they’re happier now but that doesn’t mean they don’t have concerns. Margie says she’s not sure what the future holds.
“Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? I would like to have a life partner. I don’t know about marriage,” White said.
