Is that also due to declining marriage rates as well?
Also, those marrying choosing to reduce stress by have only one or no children?
Other factors?
In recent history (past 50 years), the divorce rate's primary driver has been females under 25 cutting bait; they account for the single largest cohort initiating divorce. The second most impactful dynamic has been that of the Baby Boomers, which has caused the divorce rate to peak or have its secondary peak within their age ranges, so now the secondary peak is above 65 years of age, with men only slightly more likely to be the ones initiating the divorces.
Yes, the marriage rate has gone down, but it doesn't track directly with the decrease in divorces; that is more driven by the Baby Boomers dying off, but also, while younger folks are more hesitant about getting married, those who do have a greater respect for marriage than did their parents. They grew up with the debris of failed marriages all around them; if it wasn't directly in their own lives it was in the lives of many or most of their friends growing up.
In any case, I failed to make a relevant point in my earlier post: if 2/3 of monogamous marriages make it all the way through, then it is only reasonable to expect that the success rate of polygamous marriages would be lower, because those marriages face so many more (in truth, mostly external) challenges. Therefore, a 50% success rate is actually not proof of failure for the structure as a whole. If we didn't live in a culture in which likely 90% of one's relatives and friends are committed to overtly or covertly destroying one's plural marriage, I suspect plural marriages would have a
higher success rate than monogamous ones, if for no other reason than that they are going to predominantly be headed by men who
desire marriage, whereas a very large percentage of men (and, to a lesser degree, women) are only reluctant participants in their monogamous marriages.
And having fewer children has not resulted in less parenting stress, because, for whatever reason, the average parent has heaped upon hirself such exponentially-increasing expectations for how they're supposed to provide for their (fewer) children that parents are more stressed out now about having 1 or 2 children than people were 60 years ago when they had 4-6.
The number one reason for divorce remains what it has always been: pure selfishness, with the straws that break the camels' backs being the same as well: money, sex and differences in attitudes about how to raise children. For all the attention paid to the whole equally-yoked issue, religious differences are way down the list.
