Based on section 3.3 of the Reference Book of Men’s Issues.
Overview: It’s hard to underestimate how scary divorce can be for men. This includes financial consequences (the chance of unreasonably high child support or alimony payments) and the personal/emotional consequences (the likelihood that you’ll see your children much less, and the possibility that you’ll hardly see them at all).
This is not to say that divorce is always a nightmare for men or sunshine and rainbows for women, but two factors suggest that divorce is overall harder on men. First, women initiate a noticeable majority of divorces, which would make sense if they have less to lose. Second, suicide rates for men jump after divorce in a way that we don’t see for women.
Examples/evidence: Chapter 6 (“Maternal Rights v. Paternal Rights: The Case of Children”) of Legalizing Misandry by Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson is a great resource on this subject. I’m providing a few quotes from it here. First we have a general quote on divorce from psychiatrist Robert Seidenberg that was featured in the book, and then some cases of unreasonable treatment of men after divorce.
But the largest part of this discrimination [racial discrimination against blacks] is subtle or hidden because no one today would want to be labelled a racist. The discrimination against men in divorce-custody proceedings, on the other hand, is blatant and shameless. Protective orders, which evict men from their homes at a moment’s notice, are issued without evidence; restraining orders are issued without testimony; at times custody is awarded without testimony; and false child abuse allegations against fathers are rampant. […]
Consider the case of a Canadian man. He had been married to his employer, a physician who had paid him a handsome salary and wrote off the expenses for tax purposes. When they divorced, he had to take an eight-dollar-an-hour job. Nonetheless, he was required to pay child support based on the much higher salary earned previously. He lost more money by trying to get the payment adjusted to his new circumstances. (Noncustodial parents are forced to spend a lot of money, by the way, if they decide to challenge court rulings.) Once, when he was two days late, his ex-wife tried to have him jailed. Forced to live in his car, he committed suicide in 1999 by inhaling the exhaust fumes. […]
Consider the following case, that of a well-to-do household. “Michael” goes to court in the hope of having the judge reduce his family-support payments. On the surface, his case seems preposterous. After all, he earns $158,000. The judge rejects his plea, perhaps not surprisingly, and orders him to continue paying his former wife $7,153 every month. But that amount represents 96% of his take-home pay; after deductions, he takes home $7,455 every month. And after making his family-support payments, he has only $302 on which to live. The fact is that even single men on welfare in his city actually receive more money: $520. His son and former wife, on the other hand, are hardly living at the poverty line. Was Michael evil enough to have deserved this situation? Neither infidelity nor physical violence caused his divorce. Nor, for that matter, did “psychological violence.” It was caused, according to his wife, by the fact that he spent too much time at work. When the local newspaper ran a story on deadbeat dads, nevertheless, his sixteen-year-old son had this to say: “Dad, did you read that article in The Star? Well that’s what I think of you.”
One interesting fact is that women initiate a majority of divorces. According to the article “Why do women initiate divorce more than men?” in The Telegraph, women initiate 66% of divorces in the United Kingdom. It calls it a “popular misconception” that this is due to men cheating more, and instead points to custody and cost as the main reasons [1].
On the other hand, it’s possible that women are more likely to initiate divorce than men because in the divorce court, especially where children are involved, the odds are in the female’s favour. Married men who get divorced are generally afraid of losing their kids, with good reason: over 80% of children of separated parents live exclusively or mainly with their mother. Men, often the higher earners, fear the crippling costs of a split. Women raising children and without much income can use taxpayer funds (through Legal Aid – for example) to fight a divorce, only paying the Crown back if they get a sufficiently large settlement. Not to sound crude, but this is like going to the Divorce Casino and playing with the house’s cash.
Legalizing Misandry provides support for the idea that women initiate divorce more is that the process is harder on men. It cites economists Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen, who conducted a large study of divorce that analyzed all 46,000 cases in the year 1995 in four states. It dismissed violence and adultery as the main reason for the gender disparity in initiating divorce, finding custody as the major factor.
The solution to the mystery, the factor that determined most cases, turned out to be the question of child custody. Women are much more willing to split up because – unlike men – they typically do not fear losing custody of the children. Instead a divorce often enables them to gain control over the children.
“The question of custody absolutely swamps all the other variables,” Dr. Brinig said. “Children are the most important asset in a marriage, and the partner who expects to get sole custody is by far the most likely to file for divorce.”
Maternal preference in custody is widespread, despite generally no longer being official policy. Surveys of judges in at least six U.S. states have found that a preference for mothers is pervasive, and surveys of attorneys have found that they perceive it to be happening as well. One study found that 69% of male attorneys and 40% of female attorneys believe that judges “always or often” assume that children belong with their mothers. Almost all of them said that judges were prejudiced against fathers at least some of the time [2].
CNN commentator Jack Cafferty talks about the issue of suicide rates after divorce on his blog [3].
Experts say suicide rates are higher among divorced men - and lowest among those who are still married. Single men fall in between. One sociologist who studies family structure and suicide rates says divorced men are almost 40 percent more likely to commit suicide than those who are still married.
He includes the words of one of the divorced men who shared his story.
As a divorced man, I can honestly say I contemplated suicide for the first time in my life during the first year or two of my separation. It’s incredibly difficult to have your entire family life – children, home and even wife – pulled away from you. Prior to the divorce, I was very happy, making a good salary and living in a nice neighborhood. Soon after the divorce, I was saddled with very high child support payments, debt from legal fees and barely enough left over to pay the rent of my small 1 bedroom apartment.
The Second Sexism (by David Benatar, chapter 2) quotes an even higher figure:
While divorced women are no more likely to kill themselves than are married women, divorced men are twice as likely as married men to take their own lives.
The Vancouver Sun article “Men and suicide: The silent epidemic” gives various reasons that the disparity in suicide grows after divorce, including lack of access to children, financial difficulties, lack of social support, getting caught off guard by the divorce (since women initiate divorce more they have more time to process it), men feeling as if they were at fault for the divorce, and men self-medicating grief with alcohol and drugs [4]. An article from the Smart Marriages Archive mentions many of the same reasons for the increase in the suicide disparity [5].
“It’s still generally the case that when children are involved, the mother becomes the custodial parent,” said Hillowe. Generally speaking, “men lose the role of being a father in a way that women do not lose the role of being a mother.”
Compounding the problem: Men often feel like they’re responsible for the failure of a marriage, said Alvin Baraff, Ph.D., an expert on relationships from a male perspective, and founder and director of Men Center Counseling in Washington, D.C.
[1] https://archive.is/rqAON (The Telegraph article “Why do women initiate divorce more than men?”)
[2] http://archive.is/fmNHp (Tom James Law post “What Judges Really Think About Fathers: Responses To Court-Commissioned Judicial Bias Surveys”)
[3] https://archive.is/SDMBP (Cafferty File post “Why does divorce make men more suicidal than women?”)
[4] https://archive.is/jXt36 (Vancouver Sun article “Men and suicide: The silent epidemic”)
[5] https://archive.is/b3DfE (Smart Marriages Archive “Men more likely to commit suicide after divorce, study finds”)
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