An Explanatory Model and Empirical Test on French Data Jean-François Mignot Laboratoire de sociologie quantitative (CREST / INSEE) Observatoire sociologique du changement (Sciences Po / CNRS)

Summary Observation In most societies and couples, it is mostly women (not men) who file for divorce Question Women lose the most in divorce, so why do they file? Suggestion It’s the type of marital dissatisfaction women feel that leads them (not men) to file for divorce Empirical test data from a French national sample of divorced women between (N=1,888)

It’s mostly women who file for divorce… Whatever the period: 18th century: Massachusetts (US), Cambrai (France), Neuchâtel (Switzerland) 19th century: Massachusetts & New Jersey (US), France, Belgium, Germany (Baden & Saxe), Finland, Romania Exceptions: Scotland (from 1684 to 1830, & in the 19 th century) England and Wales from 1861 to 1920, i.e. as long as women’s access to divorce was legally restricted

% of divorce petitions filed by the wife

It’s mostly women who file for divorce… Whatever the country in the 20th century: US, Australia, England-Wales, Scotland, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, West Germany, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Greece Czech Republic, Poland, Soviet Union & maybe Russia China, Japan, Singapore (whether Christian, Hindu or Muslim divorces) Brazil, Mexico Togo, Mali, South Africa Exceptions: Italy in the 1970s, Switzerland since the legal reform of 2002

It’s mostly women who file for divorce… Data: divorces in France in the 1970s, in Mexico in , in Poland in 2005 Whatever the spouses’ ages or marriage duration Whatever the spouses’ educational levels or social class Whether the wife works or not Whatever the couple’s number of children Wherever they reside: big or small city, or countryside

It’s mostly women who initiate breakups Women do not just file for divorce, they also initiate breakups: They are less satisfied with their marriage They think about the possibility of filing for divorce earlier than men More than men, they initiate the discussions that lead to filing for divorce in married couples More than men, they initiate separation in cohabiting couples

Women lose more in divorce From a financial viewpoint Divorce lowers women’s living standard more than men’s From the viewpoint of their P(remarriage) Divorce lowers women’s probability of remarriage more than men’s

Question Women lose more in divorce than men financially and for remarriage And still women file for divorce more often than men Whatever the period, the country & the type of couple How come? Are women irrational? And men?

An explanatory model The literature on divorce initiative pinpoints several mechanisms affecting divorce filing, but none of these mechanisms can explain why in general it is mostly women who file for divorce Need for a new model

An explanatory model II In marital relationships, men place more importance than women on sexual gratification, i.e. frequency of sexual relations (Schmitt et al. 2001; Schmitt 2003) When dissatisfied in their relationship, men’s best solution for (sexual) dissatisfaction consists of complementing the relations they have with their spouse with extracurricular relations → men don’t initiate divorce women place more importance than men on emotional gratification, i.e. intensity of emotional relationships (Thompson & Walker 1989) When dissatisfied in their relationship, women’s best solution for (emotional) dissatisfaction consists of leaving their spouse in hopes of finding one more fulfilling → women do initiate divorce

An explanatory model III This model fits with the literature on women and men’s differences in preferences men are less satisfied than women with the sexual dimension of their relationship (Christopher and Sprecher 2000; Thornton and Young-Demarco 2001), they commit adultery more often(Christopher and Sprecher 2000), and their ideal number of sexual partners is greater than women’s (Schmitt 2003; for a review of this literature, see Schmitt et al. 2001) women are less satisfied than men with the emotional dimension of their relationship (Rhyne 1981)

An explanatory model IV: predictions When dissatisfied, Women initiate a break-up Men have extracurricular sexual relations When initiating the breakup, women do it for emotional reasons → when there is emotional dissatisfaction in the couple, it’s more often than average women who should initiate the breakup When having extracurricular relations, men do it for sexual reasons → when one’s spouse gets old (less desirable), it’s more often than average men who should have extracurricular relations

An empirical test of this model Data: INED survey "Women and the Changing Family,“ with 1,888 couples who divorced in France between 1970 and 1982 Variables of interest: Legal: “Who between you and your ex-husband initiated the petition for divorce?” Nonlegal: “Who between you took the initiative to no longer live together?”

An empirical test of this model: descriptive statistics Divorce initiative: 2/3 of divorce petitions for divorce were initiated by women (18.1% by men, 15.3% by both), & 69.4% of separations were initiated by women (18.5% by men, 12.1% by both spouses) Extracurricular relations: at the time of separation the man "knew" another woman in 43.3% of couples, whereas the woman only "knew" another man in 14.2% of couples divorce petitions filed by women are more often motivated by misconduct (adultery) than those filed by men, & the spouse found guilty of having committed misconduct in the marriage is more often the man than the woman Impact of emotional dissatisfaction: the fact that the spouses no longer get along (before their divorce) increases the % of petitions filed by women (from 54% to 67%) and reduces the % of petitions filed by men (from 31% to 17%) Impact of sexual dissatisfaction: a wife's aging increases a husband's relative chance to have extracurricular sexual relations (from 74% to 87%) more than a husband's aging increases a wife's relative chance (22% to 25%)

An empirical test of this model: multivariate models I Discrete-time event-history models of the initiation of divorce and separation "all things being equal," the fact that the spouses no longer get along (proxy for decreasing emotional gratification) multiplies by 2.759*** the chances that the woman (not the man) files for divorce "all things being equal," the fact that the couple no longer gets along multiplies by 2.899*** the chances that the woman (not the man) initiates the separation Controls: ages of the spouses, period, length of marriage, woman working outside the home or not, man unemployed or not

An empirical test of his model: multivariate models II Logistic regression models for which spouse knows a person with whom s/he intended to live at the time of separation (proxy for adultery) Controls: ages of the spouses, period, length of marriage, woman working outside the home or not, man unemployed or not "all things being equal," a spouse’s aging (proxy for decreasing sexual desirability and activity) increases the probability that the man rather than the woman will engage in extracurricular sexual relations each additional year that a wife ages tends to multiply by 1.220*** the chances that the man (not the woman) knows at separation a person with whom he intends to live, whereas each additional year that a husband ages "only" tends to multiply by 1.133*** the chances that the woman (not the man) knows at separation a person with whom she intends to live

Conclusion Thesis: women (not men) file for divorce because … the type of marital dissatisfaction women tend to feel (emotional) leads them to wish to replace their unsatisfying spouse, while the type of marital dissatisfaction men tend to feel (sexual) leads them to wish to add a lover to their unsatisfying spouse Empirical test on France, When a couple no longer gets along it is women (even more than usually) who initiate divorce & separation → emotional dissatisfaction indeed leads women, not men, to file When a couple ages it is men (even more than usually) who have extracurricular relations → sexual dissatisfaction indeed leads men to not file for divorce but have extracurricular relations

Thank you

Spouse who filed for divorce, based on whether or not the spouses still got along at the time of divorce

% of “adultery” at separation committed by the man or the woman, by the age of their spouses at separation

Spouses who, at the time of separation, knew "another person with whom they intended to live"