With more opportunities to divorce more often than other groups with lower initial divorce rates, gray divorce has been growing as boomers age. Remarriages have a 2.5 times greater risk of divorce than first marriages, Brown says.
Disagreements over money, infidelity, verbal abuse, pornography, substance addiction, mental illness and differences over child-rearing are some of the factors both men and women say have a negative impact on marriage later in life, says Jocelyn Elise Crowley, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, who researched reasons behind breakups for her book Gray Divorce: What We Lose and Gain from Mid-Life Splits.
“What I found is that all these marriages fell apart for the standard classic reasons, such as infidelity for both genders. Women complained a little bit more about issues of verbal abuse or their husband’s addiction,” Crowley says. “Men, on the other hand, talked about financial disagreements as well as differences regarding raising their children.”