Couple parting at fork in the road
The post-vacation hangover may be dangerous for your marriage.
Filings
for divorce spike twice a year, in March and August, according to a new
study. University of Washington sociology professor Julie Brines and
doctoral candidate Brian Serafini found divorce filings seem to follow
the annual schedule of family holidays: lowest in November and December,
then peaking in March after the passage of winter holidays and
Valentine's Day. Filings drop in April and don't spike again until
August—after July, the most popular month for vacations.
"Family
life is governed by a 'social clock' that mandates the observations of
birthdays, holidays and other special transitions," Brines and Serafini
write in the study, presented this weekend at the annual conference of
the American Sociological Association. Their study provides "the first
systematic, quantitative evidence of a pronounced and durable 'seasonal'
pattern in the timing of filings for divorce."
The
authors analyzed 14 years of divorce data from 37 counties in
Washington State before, during, and after the Great Recession and found
seasonal trends were consistent regardless of the state of the economy.
Parents of dependent children were more likely to follow the seasonal
trend, but couples without kids also saw divorce filings peak in March
and August.
One
explanation for the trend is that couples may be delaying
divorces during "socially sensitive periods in the calendar," the
authors write. But this explanation would suggest divorce filings should
spike in January, immediately after Christmas and New Year's.
Instead,
couples wait until March. Why? Brines and Serafini argue that vacations
and holidays make people optimistic about the future and instill the
belief that they can repair relationships. But after spending lots of
time with spouses, or after the usual stresses and strains of holidays,
people find themselves more unhappy than before their vacations began.
They refer to this as the "broken promise" theory.
"These rituals and transitions can be stress-inducing, and thus may intensify dissatisfaction or discord past a breaking point in some couples," the authors write.
"These rituals and transitions can be stress-inducing, and thus may intensify dissatisfaction or discord past a breaking point in some couples," the authors write.
One
grim data point bolsters the idea that vacations can raise, and then
dash, people's hopes: Brines and Serafini note that the month-by-month
trend in divorce filings is "remarkably similar" to the annual pattern
sociologists have previously identified in the U.S. suicide rate.
Culled from Bloomberg.com
