Today the Washington Post writes:
Having a decades-long marriage in Hollywood is rare, but....
I've heard this a million times, but always in the context of someone who has miraculously broken the mold. So is it even true that "Hollywood marriages" are unusually short? It turns out that it's hard to say. According to researcher Michael Aamodt, here are the professions with the highest and lowest rates of divorce:
Extruding machine operators? How did they end up in the top ten? In any case, actors aren't listed, but I gather from another source that they're close to the top ten. So the stereotype is real, but not all that real.
Math and science-y folks clearly dominate the low end of the list. And why not? They might be nerdy, but they're probably even tempered, reliable, and good providers. You could do worse.
POSTSCRIPT: It's worth noting that this is 2012 information, and differs a fair amount from the author's earlier study based on 2000 census data. Dancers were the top group both times, but the rest of them move around a surprising amount.
Two thoughts: I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that "Dancers" includes not just Joffrey ballet performers, but also (quasi-)sex workers like the pole dancer at your local strip club. If so, it's not at all shocking that they have high divorce rates. Societal expectations are definitely in play there. Same goes (in reverse) for clergy.
Second, I can't help but notice the class differences between the top and bottom lists. A big chunk of it is that people in the low-divorce list make significantly more $ than people on the high-divorce list. Maybe money can't buy happiness, but lack of money can sure as hell buy stress and unhappiness, which can certainly lead to divorce.
I think that's part of why the science-y types have a low divorce rate. It's not doctor money, but it's comfortable, especially with two income earners. We tend to have not many kids, and even then somewhat later in life after a bit of financial stability has settled in. I certainly know divorced folks in the sciences, but that 10%-ish seems about right, with most people I know who got divorced being the ones who married youngest before they had any real job or financial stability. For the most part, the ones that married at the age of 30+ are still married.
That being said, if Bennifer 2.0 falls apart, like the recent rumors suggest, that will be very sad.
And yet in other sources (google it) 40-50% of first marriages reportedly end in divorce. It’s even higher in second marriages.
Aren’t statistics interesting.
Never-marrieds also contribute to the divorce rate figures illustrated in this chart, bringing the numbers down.
I think there's a big difference between actors and famous actors, and usually the assumption is that fame and wealth leads to divorces. You'd need some pretty targeted statistics to test that.
Fame and wealth lead to greater opportunities.
What you do with those opportunities is up to you.
A wise person once observed that fame and wealth won't make you miserable or happy on their own. They will just magnify or intensify what you already are. If deep down, you're a happy, positive person, becoming rich will probably indeed make you happier because you'll do cool stuff with it. If you're miserable and a rotten person to begin with, more money will just make you more miserable and selfish. Look at Donald Trump. All the money you could want (minus the occasional civil judgment) and still the most whiny, aggrieved, miserable wretch you can imagine.
In real life people who look like Mo the Bartender always have seven wives and thirteen children.
And that blue hair is actually some kind of solid black Roy Orbison type hair dye.
"Extruding machine operators? How did they end up in the top ten?"
I've worked in factories which had extruders, and if you are one of the people running the machine that extrudes plastic all day long (and yes, it does exactly what it sounds like), when you leave work, you are going to want to do something different. Anything different.
Any. Thing. At. All. Different.
Try switching to the feeding machine? Putting stuff in instead of watching stuff come out? Doesn't seem to improve your chances in marriage, tho.
Marriages between dancers and bartneders must be a complete disaster.
And that's how they like it!
"Textile winding?"
And I'll just add, I've known two professional dancers over the years and, yeah, both divorced. No idea what the reasons were -- we weren't that close -- but dancers do spend a lot of evenings and weekends away from home rehearsing and then are on the road traveling for performances throughout the year. Probably not easy to be married to one.
I am not sure about the specific extruding machine operator designation, but many chemical/refining plants utilize a 10 hour rotating schedule. The swing from nights to days means not having regular hours around the spouse and kids. Weekends and many holidays are essentially ignored. The plants run 24/7.
This goes both ways. I work in a factory where we rotate on 12-hour shifts. It’s pretty brutal on your sleep schedule. About half the workers I know are long-term married and stable. The other half have all been divorced at least once, some are still married to their second spouse.
"the rest of them move around a surprising amount."
Not surprising when you consider how finely the occupations are divided. Some categories are broad (clergy) and some are very special (extruders). There must be a lot of noise in the smaller categories. How exactly would being a textile winder instead of an extruder influence divorce rate?
perhaps one of the biggest disappointments in my life is having never been divorced by a dancer
The dancers thing is clearly about people in the closet getting married to please their families, then getting out once they realize how unhappy they are.
As for “Hollywood” there are “stars”, who probably get married and divorced a lot, and then there’s the working class (the Valley, basically) who are much like any other factory workers in the US.
Scientologists are at the top of the league standings!!!!
What surprised me was a low divorce rate in the law enforcement and corrections professions. I’d always understood them to be amongst the highest.
If you spend much of your workday dealing with the morally worst, most messed-up, and craziest people society has to offer, your spouse is bound to come up looking good by comparison.
A machine operator is accustomed to being able to push a button and get a predictable and desired result…
What I notice is that the low ones are almost all pretty well off. And the high ones are almost all living hand to mouth.
Always follow the money.
Money is part of it, but it's not just that. The lowest-divorce professions also have a sense of mission to them, the kind of work that gives people a strong feeling of living a meaningful life. I think that puts people in the right state of mind for having a good marriage.
I'd like to know the rate of infidelity among the professions. I hear tech workers are up there.
Surprised lawyers aren't in the top ten. We can be hard to live with.