ccount: the proportion of the population that is of marrying age, the proportion that marry, and the age at marriage. Because people now live longer and marry earlier, the size of the population "at risk" increases. Only in Japan is the married proportion of the population as high as it is in the United States. Moreover, Americans who get divorced are likely to remarry. In the mid-1980's approximately 50% of divorced U.S. women remarried. Sixty years earlier, two out of three divorced persons did not remarry. If the divorce rate has risen noticeably, so has the marriage rate. Anthropologists report that many societies have even higher divorce rates than that of the United States. For example, Nigeria would have a divorce rate approaching 100 percent if some married people did not die young. The belief that high divorce rates reduce social organization has not been proved. The social effects of divorce depend on what happens to families that experience it and on the arrangements society makes forthem. Divorce can be a devastating experience. While the divorce is in progress, and for some time afterward, both parties are likely to feel personally rejected, cheated in the economic arrangements, misrepresented legally, bitter about the co-parental arrangements, lonely because they have lost friends, and afraid of living alone. In the United States, the mother traditionally has been supported economically by the father, and granted custody of the children unless she is found unfit by the courts. The father is usually awarded more material possessions and awarded the right to visit the children regularly. Prolonged and bitter struggles for legal custody have often scarred both parents and children. In extreme cases, the parent losing a custody conflict, or upsetabout material divisions may even resort to burglary or kidnapping his or her own children. In recent decades, however, other patterns of child custody and economic arran...
