Love and COVID
January 7, 2022
January is nicknamed Divorce Month, when couples split after one last holiday season. It turns out, though, that pandemic stress isn’t making this year’s numbers worse. Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, says COVID-19 has actually reduced the divorce rate.
Can you tell me about the state of marriage and divorce before the pandemic? There was sort of good news and bad news as we headed into COVID in early 2020. The good news is that marriage has been stabilizing. Most marriages are reported to be happy, and the share of intact married families has been ticking upwards in recent years. The bad news is that divorce is still much higher than it was prior to the late 1960s. We’ve also seen the share of Americans getting married and having kids falling to record lows.
