Who Divorced Whom?

An issue of frequent concern to researchers studying the antecedents and consequences of divorce is which spouse decides to terminate the marriage, i.e., who divorced ("dumped") whom. However, researchers have not agreed on how to best operationalize the dumper-dumpee variable. The present study explored the issue with a sample of 378 families. Several alternative operational definitions of the dumper-dumpee variable were examined, including who filed the legal papers initiating the divorce and responses to the question "Which one of you was the first to want out of the marriage, you or ex?" (asked of both husband and wife at three Waves). Results showed that in each family the designation into dumper vs. dwnpee could well have been quite different, depending upon how the variable was assessed, when it was asked, and of whom it was asked. At the same time, the overall proportions did not change markedly: with all measures, the wife would be designated the dumper in about 2/3 of the families. This result is directly counter to the prediction of Guttentag and Secord's (1983) sex-ratio theory.