ELLEN MCCARTHY

THE WASHINGTON POST

The demographers of the world have established the following: Americans get married more often than our counterparts in other wealthy nations, we get divorced more often, and when we’re living with someone and the relationship goes south, we’re quicker than most to hit the escape hatch. But why?

That’s the question that has consumed Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist, for the past few years. Why do we, as a society, trade in our significant others so much? And what does that mean for our kids? “There’s more turnover in American families,” says Cherlin, 60, during a recent interview from his Baltimore office. “I wanted … to go back in history and think hard about culture and look at economics and figure out why that might be.”

Source: http://www.omaha.com/article/20090704/LIVING/707049974