Social Integration and Divorce

Using panel data from a national survey of married persons, the role of social integration in stabilizing marriage is explored. The analysis indicates that social integration does not appear to have a strong uniform negative effect on divorce, as others have proposed. Of the three forms of integration considered (communicative, functional, and normative), we find only two that relate to divorce in a substantive manner. Mechanisms by which integration might deter divorce are examined, and the implications of the findings for a theory of divorce are discussed. As a major sociological concept, social integration has been invoked to help explain suicide (Durkheim 1951), coping with a catastrophic illness (Berkman & Breslow 1983), substance abuse (Umberson 1987), mortality (Blazer 1982), illegitimacy (Goode 1961), mental illness (Hughes & Gove 1981), and longevity (Moen, Dempster-McClain & Williams 1989). Central as the explanation is to sociological theory, its application to explaining divorce has never been clearly delineated and generally has been invoked only on an ex post facto basis. Moreover, research bearing on the topic has largely relied on cross-sectional or ecological data and has employed surrogate or indirect measures of social integration. However, in the face of what is viewed by some as a period of excessive individualism and moral malaise in American culture, understanding the importance of integration in explaining divorce takes on added significance (Bellah et al. 1985). In this article we examine the role that social integration plays in explaining divorce, a phenomenon seen by many as a direct expression of the search for individual fulfillment and a symbol of the current malaise. We begin by examining prior theoretical formulations of social integration and then set forth our own formulation of the problem. Prior empirical work linking social integration and divorce is reviewed. Analysis begins with an examination of the magnitude of the relation between social integration and divorce using longitudinal data