Townhall.com::Blog: The Press Catches Up with the Truth About Divorce

re: Michael Medved writes, "...For more than fifteen years, I’ve been writing and speaking about the myth of America’s "soaring divorce rate", and the pernicious lie that “50% of all marriages end in divorce.” / My bestselling book HOLLYWOOD VS. AMERICA (1992) includes a whole subchapter entitled, “The Myth of the 50% Divorce Rate.”...[snip]...The only way to measure the over-all divorce rate – the percentage of all first marriages that end in divorce --is to consider the readily available numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the most recent figures (from 2001, after the last completed national census), some 166,932,000 Americans have ever been married – or 76% of all those 15 and older. / Meanwhile, 48,412,000 have ever been divorced. / This means that of all those who have ever been married, a startling 71% are either still married to the person they originally wed, or else they remained married until the spouse died. / This figure applies only to first marriages, of course: the number for those who have “ever been divorced” (22.2% of all American adults) includes many people who have been divorced more than once..."...