Divorce and Remarriage From a Eugenic Point of View

Abstract

W IHILE the number of divorces has increased from year to year, the number of marriages has also increased, and the difference between them, which represents the number of successful marriages, shows little . change over a long period of time. The size of the evil is therefore usually exaggerated. Nevertheless, when nearly zoo,ooo divorces are granted in a single year, as has lately been the case, the problem is of sufficient magnitude to challenge eugenists. A first question would naturally be, what sort of people are getting divorces? A very slight consideration at once shows that the divorcees are on the whole biologically inferior to the happily married part of the population. They represent a much higher frequency of mental disease, a shorter expectation of life, and a high degree of sterility. Despite innumerable exceptions, then, it cannot be doubted that the divorcees as a group represent a population that is eugenically less desirable than the average, and if their divorces reduce their fecundity the result is desirable. Just how many undesirable births are prevented by these divorces is doubtful because of the very low fertility of the entire group of divorcees. Two-thirds of them have no children at all at the time they seek the divorce courts, although they have been married for an average of eight or ten years. Five-sixths of them represent the minority of the whole population that has no children or only one child. From' this point of view, the divorcees are in many cases the discards of evolution, and their lack of offspring is one of the factors making for racial betterment. At the same time, some of the divorcees are naturally superior to others, and their numbers include a good many persons who were unfortunately mated to inferior partners, and who if released from these partners should and do remarry with better success. Only about one-third of the divorcees ever remarry. Men greatly outnumber women among the remarried divorcees. A middle-aged divorced man tends to marry a woman who is younger than himself and not previously married. This provides husbands for a certain number of superior women who failed to marry at the usual time, and thereby reduces one of the most serious dysgenic factors in American life, namely, the large proportion of college graduate women who, through failure to marry, make no contribution to the next generation. On the other hand, the middle-aged divorced woman has little chance of remarriage unless she possesses unusual qualifications, such as personality, wealth, or social status. The accumulation of middle-aged divorced women in large cities creates a very serious problem socially, although it is of little direct consequence eugenically. Divorce is not a solution of marital conflict, but a running away from it. In this respect there is an interesting analogy with mental disease which, in a concept used by many psychiatrists, is regarded as essentially an attempt to escape from an unpleasant reality to which the individual cannot make a successful adjustment.