Saturday, June 15, 2002

A story published today by the Portland Press Herald reports that according to U.S. Census, The divorced segment of Maine's 15-and-older population has jumped from 9.1 percent in 1990 to 11.5 percent in 2000, surpassing the national average of 9.7 percent.

That gives Maine the highest percentage of divorced individuals in New England, and the eighth highest in the country, behind states such as Nevada and Florida.

Nobody is sure why so many Mainers checked "divorced" as their marital status on the Census 2000 long-form questionnaire. The rate appears unrelated to income level, educational attainment, religious affiliation or community size.

It's clear, however, that more people are staying single after divorce because of changing social mores and women's growing independence. That change, in turn, is driving up the proportion of Mainers who are comfortable being divorced.

"I just think it's more acceptable to divorce today," said Steve Gallant, president of Divorce Perspectives, a support group that meets weekly in Portland. "You're not a bad person for doing it."

Still, the outlook for many families of divorce is not good, said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.

Studies show that divorce "throws women into poverty . . . and probably increases the crime rate among juveniles," said Popenoe, who tracks trends in marriage and identifies ways to strengthen it.

Divorce, he said, could also negatively affect one's mental health and work productivity.

"There's an actual gain in productivity from marriage," Popenoe said. "You're working for someone else — especially if you have children — rather than just working for yourself."

Such findings are spurring pro-marriage political movements in various states, and they are at least partly behind President Bush's plan to build incentives for women on welfare to marry. But statistics do not paint the whole picture, said Laura Fortman, executive director of the Maine Women's Lobby.

Single woman-headed households — the largest group of welfare recipients — would not be so needy if the pay gap between men and women were closed, Fortman said.

Also, in a state like Maine, which has a high incidence of domestic violence, the increase in the divorced population may signal that some people are leaving abusive marriages, and that would be "a good thing," she said.