Stigma and Divorce: A Relevant Lens for Emerging and Young Adult Women?

Their Fault, Not Mine: Religious Commitment, Theological Conservatism, and Americans’ Retrospective Reasons for Divorce

“…Building on Mills's (1940) "vocabularies of motive" concept, I reasoned that actors tend to give "accounts" that situate their past behaviors or experiences in ways that will be socially appropriate for their reference groups. Because Americans who are more deeply imbedded within theologically conservative communities would be more likely to face social stigma or internalized shame for a divorce (Jenkins 2010(Jenkins , 2014Konstam et al 2016), I hypothesized that religious commitment and theological conservatism would be associated with Americans seeking to frame their divorce in ways that place the blame on their former spouse, and, correspondingly, deflect blame from themselves. Drawing on a unique, large, and representative sample of divorced Americans, and examining a variety of potential reasons that people give for seeking a divorce, the analyses have generally affirmed these expectations.…”

“…Findings from this study suggest that this may extend to the ways religious individuals process their divorce socially. While some divorced Americans report backing away from religious community after the divorce for fear of judgment or stigma (Brown 2015;Konstam et al 2016;Sullivan 2012), the fact that religiously committed Americans in my study were more likely to portray their former spouse as the initiator of the divorce and blame their former spouse's faults, while also being less likely to cite their own contribution to the divorce, suggests that some divorcées may deal with potential stigma or shame by re-articulating their divorce in ways that deflect blame or guilt. This would be completely consistent with the "vocabularies of motive" idea since religious actors would naturally want to explain their experience in a way that is consistent with the moral evaluations of their religious community and their own self-concept.…”

“…Despite increasing acceptance of divorce in the United States (Stokes and Ellison 2010), it still remains a stigmatizing situation, particularly for those within religious communities (Jenkins 2010(Jenkins , 2014Konieczny 2016;Konstam et al 2016;Simonič and Klobučar 2017;Sullivan 2012). Focusing on the explanations divorcées cite for their divorce suggests that religious individuals may mitigate some of that social stigma or shame by deflecting blame from themselves and toward their former spouse.…”

“…Importantly, the association could be bi-directional due to the religious stigma that divorced Americans often face in religious contexts. That is, people may simply be less likely to attend church after their divorce, just as religious attendance or commitment more generally may discourage divorce (Brown 2015;Konstam et al 2016;Sullivan 2012). Even so, longitudinal studies of religion and divorce have shown that religious commitment does indeed seem to have a temporal, directional effect on the likelihood of divorce over time (Amato and Rogers 1997;Bulanda and Brown 2007;Perry 2018).…”

“…Divorce is a historically stigmatizing experience (Gerstel 1987). This has been especially true within many conservative faith communities where divorcées often report feeling marked socially (Konieczny 2016;Konstam et al 2016;Sullivan 2012) while also grappling with internal shame (Jenkins 2010(Jenkins , 2014Simonič and Klobučar 2017). Recognizing the ways religious factors might influence how divorced Americans publicly account for their own divorce in retrospect would help us understand how Americans socially process-or even re-interpret-the experience of divorce in light of broader community sanctions.…”