Who Wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples

Abstract

Marriage is the most important, and the most stable social network tie in American life. Marriage is also a gendered, and therefore a potentially asymmetric network tie. Most divorces in the US are wanted by the wife. Women's predominance in wanting divorce (among couples who divorce) seems to have been consistent over time. The author uses a new longitudinal study of relationships in the US, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together surveys, to examine the gender of who wanted the breakup for both marital and nonmarital heterosexual relationships for the first time. The results show that only in marriages are the majority of breakups wanted by the female partner. Men and women in nonmarital heterosexual relationships in the US are equally likely to want to break up. Furthermore, wives report lower relationship quality than husbands, while men and women in nonmarital relationships report more similar relationship quality. Rosenfeld The Gender of Breakup P.3