The correlation between occupations and divorce
If it’s happily ever after you want, get yourself down to the dentist, optometrist or podiatrist to find a match. And whatever you do, don’t get involved with a bartender, dancer or choreographer.
That’s the findings from the latest research on the correlation between occupation and divorce/separation rates. The study, published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, showed that the marital breakdown rate for dentists was 7.75 per cent; 6.8 per cent for podiatrists, and only four per cent for optometrists. The very best occupation for a reliable partnership, though, was an agricultural engineer, with just a two per cent failure rate for marriages.
Compare that to the dancers, choreographers and bartenders and you’ll find they have almost a 40 per cent chance of parting ways.
The study’s co-author, Dr Michael Aamodt, devised a formula to determine the success of a marriage based on just one of the partner’s occupations, using US census data. He hoped to disprove the myth that police officers were more likely to divorce. His results showed that overall, law enforcement personnel were in fact less likely to break up than the general population (14.5 per cent vs 16.35 per cent).
It makes sense that our work life affects our home life, when you consider we spend such a large proportion of our time working.
When you look at the occupations that have a higher rate of marriage breakdown, it appears that people in those jobs are social, and have more opportunities to meet new people on a regular basis.
They’re also more likely to be physically close to others – think dancers, bartenders and massage therapists, which could lead to their higher than average rates of marriage breakdown, if infidelity is the issue.
Another factor that seems to affect the rate of breakdown in a partnership is stress at work. Jobs such as psychiatry and nursing are stressful, often with long hours, and require a lot of care to be given to patients. It’s common for people in these professions to feel as though they are nurturing and caring for patients all day, so that when it comes time to do the same for their partner at home they can feel exhausted and deficient.
What the data doesn’t explain though is whether these specific jobs lead to marriage breakdown, or whether those people who are more likely to be in unstable relationships end up being drawn to these professions.
It would appear that some jobs attract a certain type of person – for instance you would assume that a dentist would be less impulsive and reckless than a celebrity sportsperson. The skills that are needed to perform their job, when translated into a relationship, could tell you a bit about what they will be like as a partner.
Related links:
Secret to couple’s 60-year marriage
Why we stay in bad relationships