Divorce in the United States: law and practice

Although the Depression stemmed the divorce rate, the general trend to higher levels of marital breakdown was unmistakable in the 1930s; the rate rose from 7.9 per 1,000 marriages in 1929, to 8.7 in 1940. Roman Catholic opposition to divorce was reiterated by Pius XI in the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930. The Protestant churches, showing obvious signs of internal division, failed to take any decisive action in the inter-war period, generally allowing remarriage for innocent parties, although there was growing dissatisfaction with the notion of ‘innocence’. It became clear that resort to moral suasion was ineffective, and that reasons for marital breakdown had to be sought in such factors as increasing geographical mobility, the anonymity of the city, and the loss of the coercive control of the primary group.

The enormous social dislocation produced by the Second World War irreparably damaged many marriages, as the statistics in table 12.1 indicate. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the incidence of divorce stabilized, although it never returned to pre-war levels. As has already been observed, the 1950s brought a period of relative marital stability when many Americans made domestic happiness their priority. However, following the lead of the Episcopal church, a number of mainline churches, including the Presbyterians and the United Lutheran church, liberalized their policies by demanding simply that those who wished to remarry show evidence of repentance and undertake to enter a life-long Christian marriage.