Educated women stay married

By Laura Anderson and Joanna Vaughan
February 20, 2008 04:25am
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BETTER educated women are less likely to divorce their husbands than they were three decades ago.A Senate committee was yesterday told the risk of divorce was now higher for less educated women. Australian Institute of Family Studies director, Professor Alan Hayes, said this was a reversal of a previous trend. "In the 1970s and 1980s, better educated women were more likely to divorce," he told said. "The trend in recent years is that better educated women are less likely to divorce." Professor Hayes said international studies had shown that women who had married in the 1960s were less likely to have successful marriages than women who married from the 1980s onwards. He speculated that this was due to changing social attitudes about well-educated and economically successful women. Women who married from the 1980s onwards were also more likely to seek a balance between their work and family life. Under questioning by Family First Senator Steve Fielding, Professor Hayes explained some of the main reasons for relationship breakdown. These included family conflict, financial management, differing values, work pressures, entering relationships and parenthood at a young age and an experience of parental divorce. Professor Hayes also discussed co-habitation before marriage. "76 per cent of relationships now start with cohabitation," he said. "About half of those cohabitations over a five-year window end up in separation and about half end up in marriage. "About 8.8 per cent of marriages break down in the first five years." He also made the case for additional relationship education for young people and for a boost in relationship support programs. "The assistance to people who have experienced the breakdown of their parents' relationships is extremely important in breaking the inter-generational cycle," he said.