In Grad School? You’re Headed for Divorce

According to a story picked up by Jezebel, a study from a professor at Washington & Lee University School of Law will soon announce that women with MBAs, MDs, and JDs are “much more likely” to get divorced than men with the same degrees or women with bachelor’s degrees only. Considering I don’t even know what the hell a JD is, I’m guessing my own relationship is safe.

By Carly

The professor who conducted the study, Robin Fretwell Wilson, remarks that she believes part of the reason for the findings is that there’s still a social stigma attached to women who choose to be stay-at-home spouses. OK, I’ll grant her that, but what on Earth does that have to do with divorce? And what about men who choose to be stay-at-home spouses? It’s not that they don’t exist, and I’m guessing there’s a lot more stigma attached to being a man and staying at home than there is to a woman doing the same.

The study also begs the question of who these educated women marry. If the divorce rates of women with graduate degrees are much higher than the divorce rates of men with graduate degrees, one can only assume that women with those degrees are marrying men without them. But does that even really happen? I feel like a woman with a grad degree is less likely to marry a man who doesn’t have one. Or is that just me?

Either way, the findings are intriguing, but I don’t buy Professor Wilson’s leaping connection to social stigma for women. It takes two to divorce, so something else is going on here.