The “Silver Splitters” Trend: What Does Later-Life Divorce Mean, If Anything?
From 1990 to 2010, the divorce rate for people over-50 in the United States doubled. Since then, and including COVID, the overall divorce rate has gone down (good! good?), but the divorce rate for 50+ has continually increased.
Some of the data is contained within this article:
There is a first place you probably go on this stuff mentally, and that’s a common trope. A couple gets married, raises 2–3 kids, and gradually grows to hate and resent each other based on a series of decisions and the entire process of building a life and raising kids. When the last kid goes away to college or work or whatever, they get divorced. Virtually everyone knows at least one person who got divorced sometime between their youngest kid being 18 and 22. It’s the premise of entire movies.
So that’s part of it, for sure. In those cases, I bet the woman initiates the divorce more than the man. I don’t have hard data on that, but I bet I’m right.
