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Family, More Than Genes, Helps Drive Divorce
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 So, to help separate out the effects of genetics from family environment, the Australian team compared the marital success of cousins who grew up in stable families (no divorce) against cousins who came from families split by divorce.
The study still had flaws, one expert said.
One factor that D'Onofrio and his colleagues did not look at in their study was what's known as "assortative mating" -- the tendency of people to marry people like themselves, noted British expert Dr. Stephen Stansfeld, a professor of psychiatry at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry.
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According to Stansfeld, this means that people who experienced a parents' divorce as children may be romantically drawn to people with similar experiences -- potentially raising their own odds for an unsuccessful marriage.
In that sense, the study doesn't address what happens when "people from a background of unstable relationships" marry each other, Stansfeld explained.
D'Onofrio acknowledged that his team's results are limited by not taking this factor into account.
"The tendency for individuals to marry similar people may place some children at greater risk for marital separations, because the offspring are exposed to two parents with increased levels of psychopathology and other characteristics," that could have negative effects on their children, the study said.
It's also not known whether assortative mating is genetically driven and how that might affect children's genetic propensity for stable or unstable marriages, D'Onofrio explained.
Divorce can and does often undermine people's happiness, added Richard Lucas, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University. "Once people get divorced, people seemed to be permanently changed" and are generally less happy, he said.
"We've known for quite awhile that people with divorced parents are more likely to divorce. This study really does a nice job of looking at why that might be," Lucas said. Anything that increases understanding of all the factors involved in divorce "should help people figure out what they should be focusing their efforts on in terms of ending divorce," he added.
More information
For more on divorce's psychological impact, head to the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health.
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Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 7/20/2007
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SOURCES: Brian M. D'Onofrio, Ph.D., assistant professor, psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.; Richard E. Lucas, Ph.D., associate professor psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.; Stephen Stansfeld, M.D., professor, psychiatry, Centre for Psychiatry, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts and The London, Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London, U.K.; August 2007, Journal of Marriage and Family
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