The Origins of the Ambivalent Acceptance of Divorce

In her informative analysis of the content of magazine and journal articles, Usdansky (2009) finds that depictions of single-parent families resulting from divorce became less critical during the 20th century, but depictions of single-parent families resulting from a nonmarital birth remained just as critical as in the early 1900s. By the end of the century, she writes, Americans showed an "ambivalent acceptance" of divorce-based single parents while still finding fault with nonmarital births. What explains the different responses to divorce and nonmarital childbearing? Usdansky suggests that the relatively greater acceptance of divorce-based single parenthood may have resulted from its higher prevalence compared to nonmarital-birth-based single parenthood. Because divorce was the more common route to single parenthood, she hypothesizes, writers and social scientists - an increasing share of whom were themselves divorced - may have been reluctant to criticize divorced single parents, whereas they may have been less reluctant to criticize mothers who had children outside of marriage. Although the commonness-of-divorce explanation is plausible, it is at best incomplete. It is true that rates of divorce increased throughout most of the 20th century and that the rise occurred in all social classes (although divorce remained more common among the less educated; Cherlin, 1992). But the percentage of children born outside of marriage also increased greatly, rising from 4% in the 1950s to 33% in 2000 (U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 2005). Both divorce and nonmarital childbearing became much more common, in other words, yet the increases in divorce were accepted less critically by Americans. Why is that? I would argue that the less critical view of divorce was able to draw upon a long tradition in American culture of ambivalence toward divorce, whereas there is no such tradition concerning nonmarital childbearing. The differing depictions of divorce and nonmarital childbearing have roots in American values and law that extend back to the colonial era - back to a time when divorce rates, although worrisome to observers at the time, were tiny compared to today. From that era forward to the mid-20th century, Americans have shown a moral and legal ambivalence toward divorce. In contrast, Americans at all times prior to the mid20th century showed a moral and legal rejection of nonmarital births. Examining the historical picture may help us place Usdansky' s late-20thcentury findings in context. Divorce in the American Past The New England colonists brought to the New World a Protestantism formed in dissension fromboth the Catholic Church and the Church of England. Part of that dissension concerned divorce. The Catholic Church did not allow divorce, although if a marriage had been formed in a way that violated church rules, it could be annulled, that is, treated as if it never happened. For instance, if either partner had been forced to consent to the marriage, it was invalid under Church rules and subject to annulment. There was, consequently, no tradition of divorce in Catholic Europe. Except for a brief period during the French revolution, for example, France did not legalize divorce until 1884 (Phillips, 1988). The Church of England also did not allow divorce. When Pope Clement denied Henry VTJJ the annulment he desired in order to marry Ann Boleyn, Henry withdrew his kingdom from the Catholic Church and established the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church (and later, in the United States, as the Episcopalian Church). Yet Henry VJJJ never divorced anyone. He either annulled his marriages or simply beheaded his wives. Divorce remained illegal in England, except by Act of Parliament, until 1857 (Phillips). The New England colonists, however, followed the theology of John Calvin, who, in turn, based much of his thought on the writings of Martin Luther. As part of his break from Catholicism, Luther proposed that divorce, while always deplorable, ought to be allowed in two circumstances: adultery or desertion. …