Jacksonville Divorce Lawyer Blog
A recent article in the Washington Post on interfaith marriages said that the rate of interfaith marriages is climbing, but so too is the divorce rate for those marriages.
In 2006, 25 percent of U.S. households were mixed faith, according to the General Social Survey. But calculations based on another survey – the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 – showed that people in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be separated or divorced than couples that share the same religious faith.
Many experts believe that as society becomes more tolerant and institutional ties become less important, interfaith marriages flourish. However, once couples are married and children come along, questions about how to raise them loom larger and seem more important than when they were first married. Couples who were more tolerant of differences prior to marriage become less so after being married for awhile.
A 1993 paper published by University of Illinois at Chicago economics professor Evelyn Lehrer found that if members of a mainline Christian religion marry, they have a 20 percent chance of being divorced after five years. If a Christian and a Jew marry, their chances of being divorced within five years are more than double that – over 40 percent.
Lehrer said this is because religion is much more than going to church on Sunday (or temple on Saturday) – it informs many of the activities that couples do together as well as their ideas about money, friends and professional networks, and the differences between spouses begin to add up.
Unfortunately, what they often add up to is divorce.
If you have questions regarding Florida Family Law Issues, call a Jacksonville Family Law Attorney.