New research from the Marriage Foundation think tank has found that the number of married couples in the UK considering divorce has shrunk below pre-covid levels. The report, which surveyed 3,005 parents, dismissed forecasts of a prospective divorce boom as "both premature and highly questionable".
"First, actual UK divorce data for 2020 is unlikely to appear much before October 2021. Secondly, the number of divorces has been affected by lockdown closures and associated delays," it said.
On average married mothers and fathers were less likely to be considering divorce in spite of an uptick in unhappiness between 'Normal' times (2017-2019) and June and September 2020. Among married fathers those considering divorce were down from 2.5% (between 2017 and 2019) to 1% in September 2020. For married mothers, the rate fell from 5.6% to 0.7%. There was a corresponding fall among cohabiting parents, though cohabiting mothers were 124% more unhappy over the time period. The report noted that: “government-mandated confinement of couples to their homes from the middle of March onwards has undoubtedly added an additional constraint to couple relationships." But for some couples, the additional restraint would "reinforce" the relationships of couples with high levels of dedication. “It is therefore reasonable," the report surmises, "to expect some relationships to have thrived in lockdown and others to have suffered – above and beyond what might otherwise have been the case without a prolonged period of lockdown.”
