A recent study found that couples who drink the same amount of alcohol are less likely to divorce, while marriages where the wife drank more than the husband were much more likely to end in divorce:
They found that divorce was generally more common in couples with high rates of alcohol consumption, but that the highest divorce rates were found in couples where only the woman was a heavy drinker. Among couples where the wife reported being a heavy drinker (a measure that including admission of an indication of “hazardous drinking”) and the husband a light drinker, the divorce rate was 26.8%; when the positions were switched and the husband was the heavy drinker, the divorce rate was 13.1%.
In couples where both members were heavy drinkers, the divorce rate was 17.2%.
Norwegian Institute of Public Health researcher Fartein Ask Torvik, the lead author of the study, speculated that drinking in women upended marriages for a couple of reasons. One reason, he noted in a statement, is that women seem to be affected more strongly by alcohol than men are — so their drinking could impair them, and add risk in a marriage, more than a man’s heavy drinking might. The team also wrote that drinking “may be judged as incompatible with female roles,” and thus a particular threat to marital stability.
