Well, the Boomers have done it again. You say you want a revolution? It’s here, all right, in the form of record divorce rates among older Americans. Demographers have dubbed it “the gray divorce.”

The latest data come from researchers at the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, who have just released a report comparing divorce rates by age group in 1990 and 2017. Among the youngest age groups, divorce rates have declined sharply, by about 40 percent among 15-24-year-olds and about 30 percent among 25-34-year-olds. However, among older age groups the trend in divorce rates is the opposite, increasing about 40% at ages 45-54 and over 100% among people aged 55 and up. Overall, divorce rates were still highest among the youngest age groups, but the gap between the young and the old was much smaller than it had been before.

So, what is going on? Most likely, this is one more manifestation of the Boomer’s radical individualism. They’ve been a strikingly individualistic generation from the start. It was their individualism that created a “generation gap” between them and their more conforming, conventional parents.

The radical individualism of the Boomer generation affected their views of marriage—and divorce. It was Boomers who popularized the idea of the “soul mate” marriage. Previous generations mostly viewed marriage as a necessary partnership between two adults, in which the man would do the man things like taking out the garbage and bringing home the bacon, and the woman would do the woman things like changing diapers and cooking the meals. Love was nice, if that was included, although you didn’t expect much of it, especially after a few years had gone by. But the Boomers raised their expectations for marriage. The new ideal became a perfect melding of souls, an ideal match between two unique but complementary individuals.

That’s a lot to ask from a life-long relationship, and sure enough, the soul-mate marriage was often followed by the disillusioned divorce. Boomers married at rates about the same as their parents, but their marriages ended in divorce in their twenties and thirties at higher rates than any generation before them. Today, they are still looking for love, and if they are not finding it with their spouse, they are willing to face the disruption and pain of divorce in order to seek a new partner.

Their children, and especially their grandchildren, are a lot less boundary-breaking and a lot more careful. My research shows that since 1990, young people’s rates of risky behavior have gone way down, for everything from alcohol and drug use to risky sex to reckless driving. They’re more careful about love, too. They marry later—now close to thirty, almost a decade later than the Boomers did—and marrying later gives them to time to grow up as individuals and accumulate financial resources before they make that commitment.

The Boomers’ individualism has caused a lot of upheaval in American society, but there have been benefits, too. It was their individualism that drove their push for societal changes like greater equality of opportunity for women and ethnic minorities and greater rights for sexual minorities. Even their high divorce rates are positive in some ways. Divorce may be sad, but it’s not nearly as sad as being stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage. For both partners, it provides a chance to start again in their pursuit of happiness. The Boomers have fewer life-long marriages than previous generations did, but they also have fewer unhappy marriages from which there is no escape.

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Looks Like the Baby Boomers Are Making History Again

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Adult Development Through the Lifespan

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Why is the Baby Boomer generation breaking records in later-life divorce rates? And what are the consequences?

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