CBC Solicitors Blog, Rutherglen & Glasgow

To mark Mother's Day in America, the US Census Bureau published a series of facts about mothers.

The facts show that:

A recent study by researchers at Florida State University College of Business has found that the likelihood of separation or divorce in a relationship where both partners have stressful jobs is strongly influenced by the level of support the couple gives each, reports Florida State 24/7.

The study found that couples who had “high levels of stress but strong spousal support” gained a number of advantages over couples who had equal amounts of stress but less support. These advantages included being 50% more satisfied with their marriage and 25% more satisfied with the amount of time they were able to spend with their children.

The study also found that the types of support that were most effective varied between men and women. Women valued getting less housework related demands and more gestures of affection from their partners, whereas men valued help with errands and being made to feel appreciated.

Author of the study, Wayne Hochwarter, said that: “When stress enters any relationship, it has the potential to either bind people together or break them apart. Findings strongly confirm this with respect to job tension. What also became obvious was the critical role of communication and trust among spouses; without them, you have a foundation best described as crumbling, even in the best of circumstances.”

The first same-sex couple to get married in Los Angeles are to get divorced, reports the Daily Mail.

Robin Tyler and Diane Olson were married for almost four years before filing for divorce. The two women had been together for 18 years, but had been unable to get married until 2008, when the ban on same-sex marriage was found to be unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court.

Following the court ruling, around 18,000 gay couples were married in California. Six months later, however, the state passed Proposition 8, which again banned same-sex marriage.

According to the Daily Mail, Proposition 8 has recently been overturned by the Federal Court of Appeals, making same-sex marriages once again legal in California.

Divorce at a younger age hurts people’s health more than divorce later in life, according to a new study by a Michigan State University sociologist.

Hui Liu said the findings, which appear in the research journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest older people have more coping skills to deal with the stress of divorce.

“It’s clear to me that we need more social and family support for the younger divorced groups,” said Liu, assistant professor of sociology. “This could include divorce counseling to help people handle the stress, or offering marital therapy or prevention programs to maintain marital satisfaction.”

Liu analysed the self-reported health of 1,282 participants in Americans’ Changing Lives, a long-term national survey. She measured the gap in health status between those who remained married during the 15-year study period and those who transitioned from marriage to divorce, at certain ages and among different birth cohorts, or generations.

Liu found the gap was wider at younger ages. For example, among people born in the 1950s, those who got divorced between the ages of 35 and 41 reported more health problems in relation to their continuously married counterparts than those who got divorced in the 44 to 50 age range.

Overall, the study found that those who transition from marriage to divorce experience a more rapid health decline than those who remain married. However, those who remained divorced during the entire study period showed no difference than those who remained married.

“This suggests it is not the status of being married or divorced, per se, that affects health, but instead is the process of transitioning from marriage to divorce that is stressful and hurts health,” Liu said.