ABSTRACT

Divorce has become the established remedy for estranged spouses; every year in England and Wales some 300,000 husbands and wives and 150,000 dependent children witness the withered union’s formal dissolution. Analysis of the available social evidence from both official data and research findings must, of necessity, freeze into cold statistical aggregates the individual experiences of unhappy families. None the less, this evidence does provide a picture of the major demographic and social associates of divorce, and they are examined in this chapter.