Till Porn Do Us Part? A Longitudinal Examination of Pornography Use and Divorce
AUTHOR(S)
PUBLISHED
2018 in The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 55(3), pp. 284-296
KEY FINDINGS
- The probability of divorce nearly doubled for married Americans who began pornography use.
- Discontinuing pornography use between survey waves was associated with a lower probability of divorce for women.
ABSTRACT
As pornography use becomes more commonplace in the United States, and increasingly so among younger cohorts, a growing literature is considering its potential connection to key social and cultural institutions. The current study examined the relationship between pornography use and one such institution: marriage. We drew on three-wave longitudinal data from 2006 to 2014 General Social Survey panel studies to determine whether married Americans’ pornography use predicted their likelihood of divorce over time and under what... READ FULL ABSTRACT
EXCERPTS
- "Our study is the first to examine how viewing pornography could be associated with marital stability using data that are nationally representative and longitudinal. Using a doubly robust approach that allows us to isolate the longitudinal association between viewing pornography and likelihood of divorce, we find that the likelihood of divorce roughly doubles for those who begin pornography use between waves. While this association looks slightly stronger for women in terms of predicted probabilities, men and women did not differ significantly from each other."
- "Our study, however, found that married women who discontinued pornography use saw their likelihood of divorce decline by two-thirds, compared to no reduction for men. It could be that porn use is associated with weakened marital attachment for women more so than men. As married men tend to view pornography in greater amounts than women."
