Divorce After 50 is On the Rise

AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) conducted a study regarding divorce after the age of 50. Elizabeth Enright wrote an article delving into this study which was featured in AARP magazine for July/August of 2004. She writes “Divorce over 50 is on the rise. Women do the walking. Men don’t see it coming.”

Many individuals stay in a marriage for the children. They wait until the kids are grown then they make their move. Elizabeth Enright states that women often recognize the danger signs of a problem marriage earlier than men do. She goes on to say that one is more likely to leave a marriage earlier in proceeding marriages if they have been through a divorce before. In the AARP study 66 percent of women initiated the divorce after the age of 50 as opposed to 44 percent of men. This study also found that the men stayed in an unhappy marriage for the kids and the women stayed because of financial worry.

58 percent of men stayed for the kids whereas only 37 percent of women stayed for the kids. This isn’t a knock on the women by any means. These numbers reveal a very hard unwritten truth among men: “Why do men worry more about the children than women do? Because women take for granted that they’ll stay close to the kids. Most experts agree that men of all ages have more to lose in a divorce, especially when it comes to children. According to our survey, 42 percent of the men said that their worst fears after the divorce involved their children, with most of these men worrying they’d lose contact with their kids. In comparison, only 15 percent of women had these fears. “For men, it’s a well-founded fear,” says Vetrano, who lectures on elder divorce law nationally. “Men lose their children a lot.”
All of this brings up an interesting perspective that, at 34 with three kids under the age of 18, I hadn’t thought of prior to reading this article. I am fascinated by these statistics and would love to know how you, our readers, feel about this topic. What are your feelings on this personally? Do you have first hand experience (man or woman) with a divorce after the age of 50? Did you stay just for you kids? If so or if not, then why? Please share your views as we would love to expound on this growing epidemic as proven from the article above. To view this article in its entirety CLICK HERE.