“It turned out to be cathartic,” she said, although she did not feel secure enough to allow her full name to be used in the newspaper. She affixed a picture of boxing gloves to one corner of the page and, on the backside, an illustrated birthday cake with lots of flaming candles above the word, “Oh!”Įllen, whose marriage produced three now-grown children, had been dreading this exercise. “Life lessons,” “trust,” “makeover,” the clippings read. Most had lost their husbands to other women, substance abuse or both.Įllen’s montage - or “vision page” as termed by Midlife Divorce Recovery, sponsor of the course - reflected her effort to come to grips with a future she never imagined. Seven middle-aged women gathered at a Leawood church. “Starting over,” she snipped out and glued to a sheet of paper to present to the group. “I’d think it would be terribly stressful to get divorced at this stage in life.”įor 56-year-old Ellen, 35 years of marriage came down to this: A montage of words and images she recently clipped from magazines, the final assignment in a 10-week course for women newly divorced or hurtling that way.
“For individuals, the effects are going to be variable depending on whether you’re the dumper or the dumpee …
“What we’re now seeing raises questions about what predicts a divorce later in life and what are the consequences for society,” she said.
Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University and co-director of the National Center for Family & Marriage Research, which released a study on the “Gray Divorce Revolution” last month. The thought was, well, they don’t get divorced - their transition is into widowhood,” said Susan L. “We haven’t put much focus on divorce among older adults. People in their 50s or early 60s may expect to have a few more healthy decades left, so why spend them unhappy? And longer life spans probably figure into the phenomenon, experts say. Professional women, a boomer hallmark, are better able to get by on their own. Often, one spouse has fallen for someone else at work. They know that, for many boomer couples, the kids are out of the house and it’s time to face reality. Researchers have just begun to explore why. New research and census data reveal an unprecedented trend of Americans splitting apart as they turn grayer: In 2009, people ages 50 and older were twice as likely to divorce as their counterparts in 1990. The generation that once embraced the smiley face and peace symbol as cultural logos is now divorcing in historic fashion.ĭivorce rates are higher for baby boomers than for any previous generation, while rates are declining, slightly, for society as a whole.
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