An ISU professor’s new study shows higher divorce rates among couples if the wife becomes sick.

Amelia Karraker, assistant professor of human development and family studies, recently conducted research attempting to understand why marriages are more likely to end in divorce if the wife falls ill.

It came to Karraker’s attention in recent political elections, some politicians, like John Edwards and Newt Gringrich, had left their sick wives. Karraker was curious on why that is. Was it more popular among politicians or people with high status? Was is a popular phenomenon among the entire population?

The study included 2700 marriages, nationally, during a period of 20 years. Middle age and older couples were the subject of the study. At least one spouse was required to be between 51 and 61 years old, for a baseline result. During the 20 years the american couples were studied, 32 percent ended in divorce, while 24 percent ended in widowhood.

“There is a 6 percent higher probability that a couple will get divorced if the wife is ill versus if the wife were healthy,” Karraker said. “There is no [added] risk of a marriage ending in divorce if the husband becomes ill.”

Prior research suggests the two main contributors to divorce, if the wife is sick, are caregiving and the marriage market. If one spouse gets sick, the primary caregiver would more than likely be the remaining, healthy spouse.

“Throughout their entire life, females are socialized to care for other people, and to be concerned for other people,” Karraker said. “If the wife were to become ill, the husband is now the caregiver.”

Males are not socialized to be caregivers, they are socialized to be the breadwinner and working hard to support their family, Karraker said. The marriage market is another possible factor. There are more women than men, therefore the male has a larger pool to select a partner from. If the wife were to get sick, there may be other healthy women available to marry.

Although it was not apparent in Karraker’s specific study, prior studies suggest that wives are more likely to initiate divorce. Women report lower marital satisfaction than men.

Women who are sick are sometimes not happy with the caregiving they are receiving, and “they might think about reevaluating their life,” Karraker said.

Karraker said it is not yet known whether or not bringing children into the equation changes the outcome. In some cases divorce may even be beneficial because the child or children are living in a toxic environment.

“Maybe parents wait until they have an empty nest to get a divorce, so it doesn’t affect the children so much,” Karraker said.

During the past two decades, divorce rates for couples ages 50 to 64 have increased, but widowhood is still more likely to occur than divorce.

Karraker and her partner, Kenzie Latham, assistant professor at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis have also began studying how mental illness can affect a marriage.

“The questions we ask are, do illnesses predict a divorce, or vice versa? What is leading to what?” Karraker said.

The follow up study will also include the elevated divorce rates when the wife is sick versus the husband, and the factors that contribute to it.The study will provide more specific answers and allow researchers to pinpoint answers.

The new study will also ask if a couple divorces, are husbands more likely to remarry, and how quickly do they remarry after the divorce?

Curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat; sometimes it helps understand why the way things are and how people act. Karraker and Latham provide information that couples are more likely to divorce if the wife becomes ill.