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Divorce ‘runs in families’ - and the reason is actually genetic

Doctor Foster
Doctor Foster

Divorce runs in families, as children of divorced parents are more likely to get divorced – but the main reason is not that young people are ‘copying’ a previous generation.

Instead, genetics is the main factor, according to researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and Lund University in Sweden.

Researchers analysed Swedish population registries, and found that children of divorced parents who had been adopted were more likely to be divorced.

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In other words, they did not ‘follow the pattern’ of their adoptive parents – but instead of their genetic parents, the researchers say.

Jessica Salvatore of VCU, the lead author on the paper, ‘We were trying to answer the basic question: Why does divorce run in families?

‘Across a series of designs using Swedish national registry data, we found consistent evidence that genetic factors primarily explained the intergenerational transmission of divorce.’

Kenneth S. Kendler of VCU says, ‘I see this as a quite significant finding. Nearly all the prior literature emphasized that divorce was transmitted across generations psychologically. Our results contradict that, suggesting that genetic factors are more important.’