If at first they don’t succeed, do most Americans “try, try again”?

Wedding season is here again, and for many couples that is literally true. In 2013, 40 percent of all marriages — four out of every ten — were remarriages for either the bride or groom. One in five were remarriages for boththe bride and groom (Lewis and Kreider 2015; Livingston 2014).

Among men and women in their early 40s, more than half of all marriages are remarriages.

And among divorced or widowed individuals under age 45 who are not yet married, more than half (56 percent) say they expect to marry again. Remarriage is not the only way that previously-married individuals establish new relationships. As of 2013, almost half (47 percent) of cohabiting adults were previously married.

Despite this enthusiasm for repartnering, remarriage rates have been falling. In 2013, of every 1,000 previously-married man and woman in the country, 28 got married. But this is down from 50 per 1,000 in 1990, a decline of 40 percent (Payne 2015). Men are either more eager or more able to find new spouses than women. The current remarriage rate is nearly twice as high for men as for women (40 per 1,000 for men and 21 per 1,000 for women) (Payne 2015). In 1995, 54 percent of women who divorced before age 45 had remarried within five years of divorce. A decade later that had declined to 38 percent (NCHS).

People are taking more time to remarry than in the past. Half of men and women who remarry after a divorce from a first marriage do so within about four years (Kreider and Ellis 2011). A decade earlier, half remarried in about three years (Kreider and Fields 2002).

Love, marriage, and then a baby carriage is no longer the only route to starting a family. Today, 38 percent of couples who marry for the first time already have a child under 18 living in the home, but this is even more common among remarried couples, where 46 percent of such couples already have a child in the home. And while the rate of remarriage has declined, it is still the case that the majority of remarriages involve children. Nearly 63 percent of women under age 45 in remarriages are living in a stepfamily (Stykes and Guzzo 2015), but it is far more common for men than for women to be resident stepparents. Among remarried women in a stepfamily, only nine percent are living with a stepchild, whereas 46 percent of remarried men in a stepfamily are living with a stepchild (Stykes and Guzzo 2015).

Thus, remarriages often mean the formation of complex families.

This can present rewards in terms of having two parents in the home and resources from two parents, but at the same time it poses challenges to children and parents as new family roles and responsibilities must be negotiated (Stewart 2007). Stepfamilies typically struggle with family ambiguity, and on average, children in stepfamilies do not fare as well as those raised in two biological parent families.

In the past, stepchildren have been found to be associated with lower remarriage stability and quality. However, one study found that while the presence of stepchildren in a home was associated with lower marital quality and higher conflict in 1980, by 2000 this pattern was reversed (Amato, Booth, Johnson and Rogers 2007). Thus, as stepfamilies have become more common it is possible that couples are better able to adjust to these complex family living arrangements.

Nevertheless, remarriages are less stable than first marriages, and here recent trends have not been positive: Remarriages have become even less stable over the past 20 years. Among women under age 45, just one in five first marriages ends in divorce within five years. But among women in the same age group, almost one in three remarriages (31 percent) ends in divorce within five years (2006-10). This is up from 23 percent ending in divorce in the first five years in 1995 (NCHS). Among men and women who divorced in 2012, the duration of first marriages was about 13 years and remarriages was about ten years (Spangler and Payne 2014).

Thus, although several studies have shown that the relationship quality reported by remarried and first married couples is similar (Bulanda and Brown 2007; Whitton et al. 2013), there is no question that remarriages are more fragile than first marriages. Remarried individuals with a weak commitment to marriage are the most likely to move toward divorce (Whitton et al. 2013). Remarried couples with lower incomes and/or less education also have higher risks of experiencing another divorce.

Still, relationship researcher Terri Orbuch notes that remarried couples who have a strong commitment to marriage, who make an active effort to nurture their relationship, and who communicate well with each other can have as stable and high quality relationships as couples in a first marriage (Orbuch 2012; Shafer et al. 2014; Whitton et al. 2013). And remarriages confer at least some of the same health benefits as first marriages (Noda et al, 2009). In an appendix to this report, “Remarriages and Stepfamilies Are Not Doomed to Fail,” CCF Graduate Research Scholar Braxton Jones summarizes new research and lists several books and articles that address how to improve the functioning of remarried couples and blended families.

For further information about remarriage, please check out the NCFMR “Remarriage” topic link. https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/resources-by-topic/Remarriage.html