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Brandon Hutsonpillar

Professor Nate Helmers

English 1201 Online

14 April 2019

Annotated Bibliography

My essay will attempt to answer the question or possibly questions that are, how and why

do divorce rates change over time, and what are the leading factors to divorces. I am interested in

why divorces rates are always changing and what the main factors that lead to divorce. I chose

divorce because my parents are divorced and it is a topic that interests me a lot and I believe that

the person reading my essay along with myself will gain plenty of knowledge on the topic.

Hurley, Dan. “Divorce Rate: It's Not as High as You Think.” The New York Times, The

New York Times, 19 Apr. 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/divorce-rate-its-

not-as-high-as-you-think.html.

Dan Hurley a writer for The New York Times wrote an article called “Divorce Rate: It's

Not as High as You Think”, in April of 2005. In this article he tells to the reader how the divorce

rate is not actually as high as the experts say it is. He explains the different ways divorce rate is

calculated and which ways actually tell the true divorce rate and which ways do not. His purpose

in writing this article was most likely to inform and educate the public that the divorce rate is not

as high as it appears and that methods used to find the rate play a part in that. Dan Hurley is an

American health and medical journalist and author. He has written several books and contributed

pieces to the New York Times, Wired, the Washington Post, Neurology Today and The Atlantic.

I will use this information to aid in explaining how divorce rates change over time.
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Lehrer, Evelyn L, and Yeon Jeong Son. “Marital Instability in the United States: Trends,

Driving Forces, and Implications for Children.” SSRN, Social Science Research Network,

22 Jan. 2017, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2903125.

Evelyn Lehrer and Yeon Son are two professors from the University of Illinois at

Chicago, together in January of 2017 they wrote a discussion paper titled, “Marital Instability in

the United States: Trends, Driving Forces, and Implications for Children”. Their paper touches

on multiple topics some of which being, long term factors to increasing divorce rate, how age,

race, how ethnicity affect the likelihood of a divorce with data supporting that, and marital

instability by socioeconomic status. The purpose of this paper is to educate the reader on why

divorce rates rise with solid factual information supporting their claims. I will use this

information to help explain why the divorce rate is always fluctuating.

“Marriage and Divorce: Patterns by Gender, Race, and Educational Attainment : Monthly

Labor Review.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1 Oct.

2013, www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-

and-educational-attainment.htm.

This is an article written by the Bureau of Labor statistics, it does not supply an author

but is a credible government funded website. The article, “Marriage and Divorce: Patterns by

Gender, Race, and Educational Attainment : Monthly Labor Review” was written in October of

2013. The article gives information on marriages and divorces based on age, gender, race, and

ethnicity, as well as by education. This article is more of a “hard” source of information it gets
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straight to the point and provides plenty of statistical data to support the points made. I will most

likely use this source to help with explaining the statistics within the divorce rate.

Scott, Shelby B, et al. “Reasons for Divorce and Recollections of Premarital Intervention:

Implications for Improving Relationship Education.” Couple & Family Psychology, U.S.

National Library of Medicine, June 2013,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4012696/.

This article was written by 5 Psychologist from the University of Denver, all of which

have a masters degree or higher. All of the writers specialized in couple and family psychology.

The article was published by the National Center of Biotechnology Information, a government

funded organization. This article is about experiment that attempted to uncover the main reasons

that lead to divorce in the United States. The experiment span over a 14 year time period with 52

married couples. The article states the experiments’ procedure, data tables, and a conclusion. I

will use this article to help me explain the main factors people get divorced in my research paper.

Wallerstein, Judith. “Nine Psychological Tasks for a Good Marriage.” American

Psychological Association, American Psychological Association,

www.apa.org/helpcenter/marriage.

Judith Wallerstein has a PhD is psychology and is a writer for the American Psychology

Association. In the article “Nine Psychological Tasks for a Good Marriage”, she states tips about

what will help a couple have a healthy marriage. The purpose is to give information that will aid

in sustaining a healthy marriage. The American Psychology Association is a very prestigious

organization and releases only credible and factual information. Instead of having another source
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that states why marriages fail and lead to divorce I decided I needed a source that states what

helps in having a good marriage to create a sort of base line for my paper.

Klein, Sarah. “10 Things That Make You More Likely to Get Divorced.” Health.com, 14

Oct. 2017, www.health.com/relationships/divorce-risk-factors.

Sarah Klein is a writer for Health.com, a website that focuses on physical and mental

health, the website is strictly about helping people that is what makes it a good source. In

October of 2017 Klein wrote “10 Things That Make You More Likely to Get Divorced”, an

article that states reasons that are factors as to why people are more likely to get divorced. It

gives some reasons that are not as popular and most people do not think about, that is what

makes it different from other articles. She cites multiple other sources throughout the article. I

will use this information to help explain some more not so thought of reasons as to why people

get divorced.