Female serial cohabitors – women who have cohabited with more than one man and who often have children of different fathers — have divorce rates roughly 40 percent higher than for women who never cohabited and twice as large as divorce rates for women who cohabited with their husbands only.

According to a study by the Brown University Population and Training Center — “Serial Cohabitation: Implications for Marriage, Divorce, and Public Policy” — most women do not cohabit and only 15 to 20 percent of those who cohabited were involved in multiple cohabitations. The large majority of cohabiting women only cohabit with their husbands.

However, serial cohabitors are overrepresented among economically disadvantaged groups, especially those on welfare. Higher-order or serial cohabitations also are less likely to end in marriage. Even when social, economic, and demographic variables were controlled in a model of divorce, serial cohabitation places women at much greater risk of marital dissolution.

“Playing house,” says lawyer Emily Doskow, may seem like good practice for married life, but it can make living together seem less permanent. “People feel like ‘If it doesn’t work out, we can just step out of this.” Statistics suggest that marriages proceeded by cohabitation enjoy a better chance of success when couples become engaged before moving it.

In an eight-decade study, parental divorce in childhood was the strongest predictor of early death in adulthood.

The study of 1,500 Americans born nearly a century ago is an eight-decade research effort by Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, two psychologists who continued the research begun in 1921 by Lewis Terman. This study followed children from the time they were 10 years old until death, decades later. According to one commentary on the study, “[t]he early death of a parent had no measurable effect on children’s life spans or mortality risk, but the long-term health effects of broken families were often devastating.

“Parental divorce during childhood emerged as the single strongest predictor of early death in adulthood. The grown children of divorced parents died almost five years earlier, on average, than children from intact families. The causes of death ranged from accidents and violence to cancer, heart attack and stroke. Parental break-ups remain, the authors say, among the most traumatic and harmful events for children.”

Overall, those who fared best in the longevity sweepstakes tended to be physically active, to give back to the community, to thrive in work and career, and to have a happy marriage and family life.

Couples with twins or triplets are more likely to divorce, “with financial stress playing a major role in break-ups,” according to a study by Birmingham University’s School of Social Policy.

Research showed 28 percent of the parents of twins or triplets divorced, compared with 24 percent of other families.
The study, “The Effects of Twins and Multiple Births Families and Their Living Standards,” showed that financial pressures are among the most common reasons for the breakdown of families. The report, supported by the Twin and Multiple Births Association (TAMBA), concludes that families with multiple births reported a drop in the income following the births of the children.

These families were twice as likely as families of “singletons” to report “quite difficult” financial stress and were also more likely to be in arrears on bill payments and to have exhausted savings. Twins and triplets experience higher levels of material deprivation as parents struggled to pay for “key child-related items,” including holidays, school uniforms, birthday parties and leisure equipment.

Steve McKay, Birmingham professor of social research, said that “twins and triplets are more likely to be born to married and older couples, who are in paid employment. These factors should provide some degree of ‘protection’ against low income and deprivation, so it is deeply concerning that twins and triplets are experiencing greater levels of material deprivation than singletons and that families are at greater risk of separation and divorce.

The study analyzes government statistics. It concludes that 62 percent of the multiple birth families were worse off financially after the babies, compared with 40 percent of other families.

Many Americans recoil at reports from Asia where the preference for sons over daughters accounts for an imbalance of 80-million “missing” females from the normal number of male and female children. Yet while Americans may read with some horror the fate of female embryos and female infants in Asia, they may not realize that American parents, especially fathers, also favor boys over girls.

In “The Demand for Sons: Evidence from Divorce, Fertility and Shotgun Weddings,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gordon Dahl and Enrico Moretti argue that this parental preference affects divorce, child custody, marriage and shotgun weddings when the sex is known before, child support payments, and the decision of the parents not to have any more children.

Among other conclusions, Dahl and Moretti assert that:

> In “shotgun” marriages, those which follow pregnancy in an unmarried couple, data from California suggests that for those who have an ultrasound test, the first-time mothers of boys are much more likely to be married at the time the child is born. “The evidence suggests that fathers who find out the child will be a boy are more likely to marry their partner before delivery,” write Dahl and Moretti.

> Parents with girls are more likely to be divorced or separated than parents with boys. This likelihood, though diminishing in recent years, amounts to a 1 to 7 percent “higher probability of divorce.”

> Divorced fathers are 11 to 22 percent more likely to have custody of their sons in all-boy versus all-girl families.

> In families with at least two children, the probability of parents deciding on having another child is higher for all-girl families than for all-boy families.

Since at least 1941, men have told pollsters that they prefer a boy to a girl. Taking all the evidence together, Dahl and Moretti conclude that parents in the United States prefer sons.

In the mid-1980s, an infamous story in Newsweek infuriated feminists by asserting that a single, college-educated 40-year old woman was more likely to die in a terrorist attack that walk down the aisle as a bride. The claim, which worked its way into movies and sitcoms, suggests that these educated women faced the fate of ending their lives as unmarried women.

A recent briefing paper from the Council on Contemporary Families states that historically woman with a college degree have been the “least likely” group to ever marry, these numbers are changing with every decade.

The report, by economists Betsey Stevenson and student Adam Isen of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes the data on marriage, education and women and suggest that for college-educated woman who hope to marry, the news is good.

In 1950, 90 percent of the white female high school graduates had married by the age of 40, compared to 85 percent of the college-educated women. Thirty years later, educated women began closing the gap. In 1980, 92 percent of the 40-year old white college graduates had married, compared with 96 percent of the high school graduates. Since then, marriage rates have fallen for all groups, but the chance of a woman marrying by 40 with or without a degree is about the same.

The paper illuminates the marriage over 40 question. College-educated woman who are unmarried at 40 are twice as likely to marry in the next 10 years as unmarried woman who have only high school educations.

According to Working Mothers Magazine, some 2.2 million divorced women in the United States do not have primary physical custody of their children, and an estimated 50 percent of fathers who seek custody in a disputed divorce are granted it.

The “new reality” of divorce is those women who are the primary earners in a marriage often see their husbands gain primary physical custody of their children when the marriage ends. Not long ago, Moms (working or stay at home) almost always got the kids in messy divorce wars because judges were swayed by the so-called “tender-years doctrine,” a presumption that mothers are the more suitable parents for children under seven. Many states have abolished this; moreover, women are poised to outnumber men in the work force for the first time in American history. The Great Recession has produced “a burgeoning crop of Mr. Moms.”

“Men are now able to argue that they spend more time with the kids than their working wives do,” says the veteran New York City divorce attorney Raoul Felder.

The percentage of fathers with primary custody will likely increase, which is one more example of shifting social views about parenting.

Getting married and staying married are good for a person’s health, even when it is followed by remarriage, carries specific long-term negative effects on health.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, tracked the marital status of 8,652 people aged 51 to 61 over a period of 18 years. The study, by Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, and Mary Elizabeth Hughes, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, examines both marital transitions and a wide range of health dimensions.

Among other findings, the study concludes the following:

> Married people who had been divorced had worse health in every area examined than those who had never been divorced.

> Among people widowed and divorced, those who did not remarry had worse health than those who did.

> Remarried people had 12 percent more chronic health problems and 19 percent more physical limitations than “continuously married people.”

> Divorced people endured variety of more health problems than continuously married people, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer and mobility.

The research suggests that the loss of a spouse through death or divorce takes an immediate and long-lasting toll on the physical and mental health of those affected. It suggests that the stress and financial uncertainty of living along after the loss of apparent does not diminish with time and compromises a person’s health years later.

Here are what are called the “five deadliest marriage sins that can wreck an otherwise good marriage and send you in search of a divorce lawyer”:

1. Be a bore.

2. Cultivate the attitude a belief that your spouse owes you.

3. Eliminate the gene for pleasure. In other words, try to be a miserable bitch or SOB all the time despite the best efforts of your spouse to make you happy.

4. Make your spouse feel inadequate, unworthy and unattractive.

5. Care only about yourself.

At least 66% of all the divorced couples in America are childless. This is also one of the main reasons of getting divorced, according to experts. Statistics also reveal that couples with children have lower chances of getting divorced than childless people

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control reveals some surprising statistics about love marriage. Namely, if you want your love to last, get married. And then have some children.

The Marriage and Cohabitation Study, which began in 2002, tracked the relationships of 12,571 men and women ages 15 to 44. Of those, over 40 percent were married and 9 percent were living together. According to the study, marriages without children had only a 34 percent chance of lasting 10 years, compared with 79 percent for those where woman gave birth eight or more months after getting married.

Despite the studies, including one by the Childless by Choice Project study, that suggest that couples without children are motivated to remain married without children because of marital satisfaction, the risk of divorce remains. In fact, childfree couples are just as likely to divorce as couples with children.

However, an article entitled “Modern Marriage Risks Amplified by Children,” which was published in Unscripted, states that divorce is much less problematic for the childless. Writes J. Bushnell: “[N]onparent couples don’t have to stick out a bad or abusive relationship for fear of supporting a household or raising children alone. Unlike parents, childfree couples don’t have to worry about how a divorce will impact children; instead, they can split their assets 50/50, move on, and even move away, without concerns about taking a child away from its school district or nonresidential parent.”

Bushnell also notes that the risks of divorce are much higher for women than for men if they have children. “As 80% of children live with their mother following a divorce, perhaps women should seriously consider before starting a family whether they are equipped to parent alone one day if their marriage fails. Because single motherhood is clearly a very strong possibility. Imagine a drive-through wedding chapel in Las Vegas and the Elvis impersonator/ordained minister who is about to marry you asks, “You have a fifty-fifty chance of ending up as single mother, are you still going to say ‘I do’ and have kids with this guy?”

Ace private investigator Bill Mitchell of South Carolina has published a guide to catch a spouse who is having an online affair.

In “One Clues of an Online Affair- Catch a Cheating Spouse!”, Mitchell suggests that these are 10 telltale signs of marital infidelity online:

1. Your spouse or partner spends excessive time surfing the Internet.

2. Passwords, instant message “buddy lists,” Internet email accounts and emails are concealed or even protected from you.

3. Your partner abruptly shuts off the Internet and/or computer when you approach.

4. The computer and monitor are always positioned to avoid your scrutiny.

5. The Internet history is cleared every day, including chat sessions, instant messaging, or your spouse downloads software that automatically overrides this information.

6. Your spouse uses the computer after you go to bed, when you fall asleep, or in the middle of the night.

7. Your spouse exhibits a compulsive need to be online and seems defensive when confronted to stop.

8. Your spouse shares personal information, photos and events with strangers online.

9. He or she plays online games and frequents “personals” chat rooms.

10. Your spouse exhibits the eight warning signs described in The More You know – Getting the Evidence and Support You Need to Investigate a Troubled Relationship.