Divorce May Be Genetic

Guest: Jessica Salvatore, PhD, Research Assistant Professor, Developmental Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University If your parents divorced, you are more likely to divorce as well. Social scientists have long thought that this was because children didn’t learn healthy skills from their parents and they later repeated problematic behaviors in their own marriages. But a new study out of Virginia Commonwealth University shows that the risk for divorce could be genetic, instead of environmental. In other words, it’s not that children of divorce learn behavior that could lead to divorce, it’s that they’re born with genetic tendencies that put them at greater risk of divorce. Nature trumps nurture in this case, according to the researchers.