Divorce and Stigma

In this paper, I analyze the stigma associated with divorce. Drawing on interviews with 104 divorced women and men, I show how stigma attaches to the conditions surrounding divorce rather than to divorce as a general category. Various processes—including the splitting of friends and the development of accounts—lead at least one party to a divorce to feel blameworthy. Individuals who divorce see themselves as excluded from and devalued in informal social life. Finally, I suggest that the divorced participate in stigmatizing divorce: they themselves devalue others who are divorced and sustain the idea that to be married is to be “normal.” If we understand stigma as referring not simply to the realm of public sanctions but rather see it as emerging out of everyday experience, it is clear that the divorced continue to be stigmatized.