The Familial Disintegration: The Divorce Revolution (07/10)
(This is the seventh in a 10-part series on the Moral Decline of America.)
Domain V: The Familial Disintegration
The breakdown of the semantic, spiritual/educational, and institutional substrates destabilized the primary unit of social reproduction: the family. The data indicates that the family unit did not collapse simultaneously with the semantic layer but followed it with a lag of approximately 5 years.
7.1 The Divorce Revolution (1967)
In the 1950s, the divorce rate was relatively low and stable, hovering around 2.2 to 2.3 per 1,000 population. The “Great Divorce” did not begin instantly at the turn of the decade.
The inflection point—the year where the rate of change clearly shifted from stable to exponential—is 1967–1968.
- 1960: 2.2 per 1,000.
- 1965: 2.5 per 1,000.
- 1967: 2.6 per 1,000.
- 1968: 2.9 per 1,000.
- 1970: 3.5 per 1,000.
- 1980: Peak at 5.3 per 1,000.
The acceleration (second derivative) turns positive in 1967. While no-fault divorce laws (starting with California in 1969) are often blamed, the filing rates were already accelerating before the legal changes facilitated them. The legal changes were a lagging institutional response to a behavioral shift that had already occurred. The “Semantic” collapse of 1962 (eroding “duty,” “forbearance,” “vow”) took about 5 years to metabolize into the “Familial” action of filing for divorce in 1967.
7.2 The Rise of Cohabitation (1968–1970)
Cohabitation (“living in sin” in the parlance of the era) was statistically negligible in 1960. The census estimated only 1.1% of couples were cohabiting. However, the rate of increase shows a distinct “elbow” in the curve starting in the late 1960s. From 1960 to 1970, the number of cohabiting households increased significantly, but the explosion in raw numbers occurred post-1970.
The “normalization” of cohabitation tracks with the 1968–1970 period. This behavior represents the ultimate triumph of the “personality culture” over the “character culture”—the rejection of the formal, binding institution of marriage in favor of a fluid, contingent arrangement based on emotional gratification.
Threshold Year (Pc): 1967 (Acceleration of Divorce Rate).