Divorce Health Divorce Health Topics for Men and Women

Nutrition for Women Eating right & staying healthy for Women

Sexual Health Women's sexual health during and after divorce

Fitness Goals Looking good and feeling better

Emotional Wellbeing Use a support network to stay focused

Divorce parenting topics for moms

A Challenge for Women

Going through a divorce can be the most challenging time in a woman's life. Changes come fast and furious. It's hard enough to adjust to being single again, but if you compound that with the financial and emotional adjustments of a divorce, a woman's mental and physical wellbeing may be at risk.

The stress of divorce may wear down many aspects of women's health according to a study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior found. The study focused on interviews with more than 400 mothers of adolescent children, including 80 women who had just gone through a divorce. The interviews began in the early 1990s and were repeated ten years later.

Even as stress dropped off over the years, it left an unmistakable mark on a divorced women's health. Ten years after the study began, the divorced women reported significantly more health problems than the married women.

Divorced women were more likely to suffer from hypertension, diabetes, depression, stomach trouble, and other conditions that are strongly correlated with stress than married women.

The health gap that developed between the divorced and married women is especially striking because the two groups were equally healthy when the study began. But as years passed, divorce appeared to have had a direct impact on a woman's health.


Happiness at Risk

In another study, (Wallerstein JS, Blakeslee S. Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade after Divorce. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989) the long term happiness of divorce women was studied. That study showed that most family functioning is worse 12 to 18 months after the divorce than at the time immediately surrounding the divorce.

Five years later, one third of the children were still functioning at a lower level than they did at the time of the divorce.

One in three children of divorced families still found themselves still embroiled in the ongoing bitterness of their two battling parents.

Ten years after the divorce, one half of the women and one third of the men studied were still intensely angry at their former spouses.

The continuing animosity and conflict between the parents were frequently transmitted to their children, who become caught in the crossfire.


What Can You Do?

If these studies are to be believed, the long-term consequences on women's happiness and health can be considerable. Yet women can improve their chances of moving on to better lives and greater happiness through positive coping mechanisms and strong life choices.

Don't be a victim of divorce. Take charge of your health and wellbeing now.


A Little Bit of Truth...

Myth:	Following divorce, the woman's standard of living plummets by 73 percent while that of the man's improves by 42 percent.
Fact:	This dramatic inequity, one of the most widely publicized statistics from the social sciences, was later found to be based on a faulty calculation. A reanalysis of the data determined that the woman's loss was 27 percent while the man's gain was 10 percent. Irrespective of the magnitude of the differences, the gender gap is real and seems not to have narrowed much in recent decades.
Myth:	It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings.
Fact:	Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women.
Myth:	Infidelity causes most divorces.
Fact:	Infidelity is just one of several common reasons why people end their marriages. Some of the other major factors are abandonment, drug use including alcohol, felony conviction, mental illness, money arguments, poverty, infertility, and violence.
Myth:	Divorce is more likely when you have kids.
Fact:	Divorce rates are highest, by far, among the young, the recently married, and among childless couples, and always have been. The more children you have, the less likely you are to divorce. Divorce happens in large families, too, but less often. It is also true that among families with children, divorce is more common among those with older children and less common among those with infants and pre-schoolers.