Cascading toward divorce: the roles of marital and child factors.

This longitudinal study examined the role of marital and child factors in predicting divorce potential and actual divorce occurrence. Participants included 140 young adolescents (73 girls, 67 boys; mean age = 13 years 2 months) and their parents. Child-related (number of children in the family, the presence of a male child in the family, and the adolescent's level of anxiety-withdrawal and conduct disorder problems) and intramarital (marital satisfaction and, for some analyses, divorce potential) factors served as predictors. For both wife and husband data, lower levels of marital satisfaction predicted higher current levels of divorce potential, and, in turn, divorce potential predicted greater likelihood for divorce up to 7 years later. No child-related variables predicted divorce potential or divorce occurrence.