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Comment by throwawayboise | Hacker News Reader

I think divorce statistics are not related to age of pairing off, which if anything was younger farther in the past than it was even a generation or two ago. Divorce is simply not the social stigma that it used to be, and it's easier to get so it happens more now. Rather than working through their problems, people think it seems easier to just split up.

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It's easier for women to support themselves now too, so they don't have to stay married for financial reasons.

... and get a large payout through divorce, in some cases!

In very few cases these days. The majority of monies given out is for childcare, it is very difficult to have court ordered alimony for terms longer than 10 years even if the spouse was a stay-at-home parent for more than 10 years.

It often is easier to just split up. People grow and change, and often that growth and change between two people isn't compatible.

AFAIK, evidence is pretty clear that delaying marriage (up to a point!) reduces the likelihood of getting divorced.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/want-to-avoid-divorce-wait-to-get...

Of course you are correct that lowered social stigma associated with divorce is also important. This topic must be difficult to study over very long periods of time, because so many things are going on (changing age of first marriage, reduced social stigma associated with divorce, women's liberation, changing religiousity, etc. etc.).

Divorce has steadily declined in cohorts married since 1980.

I would guess this is driven by the decline of marriage overall, with those forgoing marriage being those most likely to divorce

> Rather than working through their problems, people think it seems easier to just split up.

For some problems, this is indeed the absolutely correct decision - but it simply wasn't culturally acceptable in the past.

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