Russian women are known for strong family values, but what about divorce statistics? In recent years, the divorce rate in Russia keeps steady on the level of about 60% to the number of marriages entered every year. It’s higher than in many developed western countries.
Divorce statistics in Russia (1950-2017)
Personally, I believe the reason for the high number of divorces in Russia lies in early marriages and societal values.
Girls are supposed to be married by 24, the society holds. Russian men think that women should be married by 21, while ladies would prefer to get hitched later. But they are forced to enter marriages early through state-sponsored propaganda that also promotes giving birth to kids early. Remember, for a Russian women happiness is officially in getting married and having kids, there are no different opinions about that.
Only once she is married with kids, she is going to be happy, women believe. Thus, the high rate of marriage failure, because the women marry simply not to be single, hoping to achieve the bliss they were promised.
The realities of marriage, however, are far from bliss for Russian women
Wives are responsible for everything at home (chores, cleaning, cooking, childrearing, washing, ironing, shopping, etc). The husband’s job is to provide for the family, but most married Russian women are working full-time. So, the wife is also partly a bread-winner and at the same time the homemaker and mother.
Besides, the wife should ‘support’ her husband, which means she needs to sacrifice her own career to allow him advance, as well as keep herself back in order not to destroy the sensitive male’s psyche. If the wife is making more money than the husband, he is entitled to feel emasculated and start cheating, drinking, etc. If he does, it will be the wife’s fault, because she deprived him of his pride by doing better than him in the ‘man’s department’ — career. In general, cheating in a marriage is always the wife’s fault. She did something wrong — didn’t keep herself beautiful for him, didn’t give him enough sex, maybe didn’t maintain the marital home to the standard, or simply wasn’t loving enough.
Fathers don’t have to do anything as long as they have a job. They are allowed to drink with friends and even cheat.
Because people marry very early, disillusionment often follows for women and they feel that their lot is too much. Often they catch the husband cheating. If the initial chemical attraction has worn off (she fell out of love), then it’s likely the divorce may follow.
The outdated family model is responsible for the high level of marriage dissolutions in the Russian Federation, I believe. People of the 21 century don’t feel comfortable in the restrains of the patriarchal family model.
Official statistics
- Soviet Russia had the divorce rate of 40% in 1980, the official statistics by GKS.ru show.
- It peaked at 84% in 2002: 4 out 5 marriages were dissolving every year.
- In the last 10 years, the rate of marriage breakdown in RF was on the level 51-62%.
How does Russia compare to the rest of the world?
It’s hard to compare divorce rates when the statistics available varies so much by the year when the data was collected.
As you can see on the example of Russia, in certain years the number of marriages drops and there are substantially more divorces or vice versa. It’s probably useful to compare the last 5 years rolling averages, but such data is not available, at least, I couldn’t find it.
However, even this imperfect data shows that only Portugal and Spain may compare with Russia in the department of the divorce rate.
Read also:
- Population of Ukraine 1990-2018: Official statistics by Ukrstat. Divorce rate, male to female ratio
- How well off are Russians in 2018?
- What unites Russians? Top-22 modern Russian icons
- Russia has the highest wealth inequality in the world
There were times, when girls get married between 12 to 15 years old. And then was no high divorce rates. Nowdays based in this statistic only Ireland, Macedonia and Brasil look like acceptable among the non-muslim countries.
Robert, the only way to guarantee that you won’t divorce is to never marry 😉
There were times that people worked st the same company for all their life bed, but now jobs don’t exist that long. It’s a different world.
Yes, probably I have stone-age idealistic thinking.
Better to consider a thousand times before enter one (the reason i never was married).
I plan marriage for life. And no divorce.
Otherwise (if could end) marriage is meaningless, and keep going with cohabitation/ lovers.
That’s what I thought.