What does the Bible say about divorce and marriage? Let’s debunk 3 myths to uncover the truth, that Jesus came to deliver you from evil, not submit to it.
When you’re making the decision to divorce, the last thing you need is to have Christ’s deliverance thwarted by spiritual abuse. To see if you have grounds for biblical divorce, take our free emotional abuse quiz.
Does The Bible Say Divorce Is Bad For Kids?
No. The bible repeatedly says that Christ came to deliver you from evil and that you should separate yourself from wickedness. Here are some modern day studies that confirm this:
- What is a Life-Saving Divorce?
- Why destructive parents are so bad for kids (Jaffee Study).
- Will this unhappy marriage become happy in 5 years? No, not if there’s abuse (Waite Study)
- Research on why divorce is best for kids if their father is abusive (Wallerstein Study).
- Scriptures that confirm divorce is healthy for victims of emotional abuse.
Transcript: What Does The Bible Say About Divorce And Marriage
Anne: I have Gretchen Baskerville on today’s episode. Anne: She is a Christian divorce recovery leader and researcher. For 20 years, she has worked with Christian women going through difficult life saving divorces. She listens with compassion to those who have suffered from domestic violence, betrayal, infidelity, addicted partners, and emotional abuse.
She herself is a survivor of a toxic marriage. And she walked through her own life saving divorce and was a single mother for many years. Today, she’s happily remarried. She is a graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in Bible and Christian education. Welcome Gretchen.
Gretchen: Oh, it’s so great to be with you, Anne. Thank you for having me.
Anne: So today we’ll talk about what the Bible says about divorce and marriage. And for my non-religious friends listening, stay tuned. These are common myths women of faith. Faith encounter, but it’s also societal things that people say.
Myth 1: Divorce Is Universally Destructive For Kids
Anne: So Gretchen, both women of faith and just women in general, regardless of their paradigm, they really feel like divorce is going to hurt their kids.
What does the Bible say about divorce and marriage? It says to depart from evil. That would be a pattern of sexual immorality, physical violence, chronic emotional coercion, life altering addictions, abandonment, in many cases severe neglect or indifference. These are people who aren’t looking for a grass is greener divorce. They are looking for relief from the chaos. They want safety, and that’s where this first myth comes in.
Divorce is not universally destructive to children. The truth is, 8 in 10 kids of divorce turn out fine. With no safety. Long term, emotional, psychological, or social problems. And we’ve known that for over 30 years. Some critics are gonna misquote me, and they’re gonna say, you know, Gretchen denies kids feel any pain, sadness or grief. You know, Gretchen is claiming that kids just sail through divorce without any negative feelings at all, and, and that’s not at all what I’m saying.
Anybody who’s ever been through a divorce with little children knows how tough it is. The children will feel pain and sadness, confusion and grief. Mine certainly did. They may miss the other parent or not. They may cry a lot. Mine did.
Long-Term Effects Of Divorce On Kids
Gretchen: But on average, kids return to their normal level of emotional health after those first two stressful years. And having those additional years of stress from moving, maybe from finding a new school, maybe from having to make new friends, are different. From saying that a kid has lifelong, long-term, serious emotional, psychological, or social problems. Now, I know what your listeners are thinking.
Because I had one of those hostile divorces where my ex was using the kids to hurt me. So the stress went on way longer than two years. Because I had ten years of going through family law court, over custody issues. So, yes, in those kinds of cases, yeah, the stress and tension will continue. But here’s what’s so interesting. The early researchers found this.
Here’s Dr. Mavis Hetherington, even from the 1980s and 90s, she had already tracked divorced families for 20 years. She says, in the short run, divorce is brutally painful to a child, but the negative long-term effects have been exaggerated. And that’s Dr. Mavis Hetherington from the University of Virginia.
Anne: It’s so interesting to have actual statistics on this. Because abusive men, or their flying monkeys, have perpetuated this myth as a way to manipulate a woman, control and exploit her. What does the Bible really say about divorce and marriage?
Gretchen: Absolutely. Because it’s ingrained in our society. Even if you’re not religious, you’ve heard this all over the place that divorce universally destroys kids. The bestselling book 22 years ago was a book called The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Wallerstein. And we’ll talk about her later. But people love to quote that book because of one page in her introductory section, where she really condemns all divorces as selfish.
What Does The Bible Say About Divorce And Marriage: Manipulation By Abusive Partners
Gretchen: And wow, I still hear quotes from that page on social media now. And so I have to push back and say, well, what about these other 20 quotes from her other pages? But yes, abusers themselves manipulate us. People who believe in marriage at any cost. They don’t care how much you and the kids are destroyed. They will repeat this myth all day long. Figuring out what the Bible actually says about divorce and marriage can be tough.
Anne: In the marriage, at any cost, they don’t care if you or the kids are destroyed. What they’re saying is we care about the consequences to him. We don’t mind so much if you have them or your kids have them. If you need support from a group of women who totally understand, sign up for Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.
So myth number two.
Myth 2: Kids Won’t Value Marriage After Divorce
Anne: If you divorce, your kids won’t value marriage. So in other words, when they get older, they too will get divorced. By the way, I’ve never thought this because all of my friends who had divorced parents, they highly value marriage. So I have not personally seen that in my own experience.
Gretchen: This is another fear bomb that especially Christian organizations will put out there, especially the ones that want you to stay married and favor the the abuser, even the pedophile over the wife and the children.
Myth number two about what the Bible says about divorce is that your kids won’t value the sanctity of marriage. But the truth is that most marriages of kids from divorced homes are lifelong. In fact, most people who marry in the United States have lifelong marriages, including children of divorce. Now it is true that children from divorced homes are just a bit more likely to get divorced. The top researcher on this topic for the last, I want to say 22, 23, 24 years is, uh, from your area.
He’s from the University of Utah, Dr. Nick Wolfinger. And in 2018, he said adult children of divorced parents have a 47% percent divorce rate. And those people whose parents did not divorce had a 40 percent divorce rate. In other words, there’s not a huge difference between those two groups, only 7%. So If somebody listening to this is staying just because of this myth, yeah, it’s not worth it for 7%.
Anne: Did this research talk about any divorce or divorcing the person’s actual parent?
Impact Of Grandparents’ Divorces
Anne: So, for example, my grandpa had divorced twice before he met my grandma, but is it only talking about when they divorce the parent of the kid?
Gretchen: You know, that’s a good question, and I also don’t think it has been studied, the effect of grandparents. I think it’s bio parents.
Anne: My father’s dad, his entire family, more or less, like so many of them, divorced multiple times. But all their children didn’t. My parents aren’t divorced, for example, and a ton of their kids aren’t divorced. So I never had a negative feeling about divorce, just because my dad’s parents and their family had a ton of divorces.
Which kind of signaled some unhealthy stuff. But the kids were like, wow, that was unhealthy. We want to be more healthy. People don’t think, hmm. Maybe they learned the opposite from their parents.
Gretchen: Bingo, a couple of university professors actually wanted to see if this was true. They wanted to see if different kinds of divorce affected kids differently. So if the divorce was for serious reasons, a divorce to find relief from an abusive home made a huge difference in how kids saw marriage or valued marriage. So kids whose parents got life saving divorces for serious reasons still It was unbelievable.
And here’s what the researchers found. I’ll just read their last sentence. The present study suggests one set of circumstances that a parental divorce may not undermine an offspring’s commitment to marriage. If it ends and especially discordant and aversive, that means really bad, toxic, betrayal oriented, abuse oriented parental marriage.
Debunking Myths About Divorce and Children In The Bible
Gretchen: And that’s amazing, because we were all taught that if we divorce, we’re setting a bad example for our kids. In reality, kids know right from wrong, and kids know that marriage should be safe, loving, and respectful.
Anne: Yeah, I mean, just logically speaking, it seems like kids who observe a terrible, abusive marriage, might value marriage less, because they might be like, is this what marriage is?
This is a mess, I’m not into this. But if you have a parent who is like, Hey, I deserve to be treated well, and this isn’t loving and safe. So I’m gonna get divorced. The bible says marriage is supposed to be a loving and safe place. It’s interesting what we think we’re teaching our kids, but then what we would actually be logically teaching them through our example.
Gretchen: They’re not under the same pressure as we are, and they know what a marriage ought to look like. And they know that an abusive marriage is no marriage at all. But she thinks she has to stay, and we’re talking about further injury, psychologically and physically. When she’s in despair, she’s been driven into depression, we’re talking about suicide, we’re talking about even homicide.
Myth 3: Divorce Causes Lifelong Issues For Kids
Gretchen: There are many things worse than divorce. Father’s Day is a great time for father’s rights organizations to really hammer on this myth that a two parent married home is always superior to a single parent home. And that’s absolutely not true, and it’s been proven over and over again. There are times when divorce is good for kids. And by the mid 1990s, how come no one ever told us this? Because we know that it’s the abuse and betrayal that broke the marriage.
So the question becomes in people’s minds. Especially since we tend to say, well, is this abuse or is this a normal marriage with typical ups and downs? So I find that whenever I bring this up, women say, well, I don’t know, maybe I’m not in a highly toxic home. I mean, we never scream at each other.
Now let’s look at the next level down, what we would still call toxic homes. Those homes were at least one and a half times better in cases where the kids’ parents divorced than if they had stayed.
Living In Two Different “Countries” Post-Divorce
Gretchen: It’s important for us to realize that although divorce does cause them stress, worry, and nightmares, they may even forget their toilet training. Most of these repercussions go away in about two years, but the abuse is far, far worse than the effects of divorce.
Anne: With a divorce, you cannot control what happens at your ex-husband’s home, right? So I like to think of it as your children get this experience living in two different countries. And they hopefully will feel and see that in the one country, it feels yucky, confusing, and chaotic. There’s always some weird thing going on.
And then the other country, it feels safe, calm and peaceful. And that they’ll start to recognize those two cultures and start making choices for themselves about what type of life they would like to have.
Gretchen: Absolutely. Because many people will say, Well, if I stay married, I can protect them from him. That’s the same story I gave myself. There’s no way you can stay awake 24 /7. You have to go grocery shopping. And they’re observing the covert disdain, dismissiveness, indifference in the home.
What Does The Bible Say About Divorce: The Jaffe Study
Gretchen: But there’s an incredible study we were never told about. It’s called the Jaffe study. And it says if a father has at least three of the seven antisocial traits, and they listed them. That if the children live with him 24/7 seven days a week. Then they are one in eight chances likely to develop conduct disorders themselves. If you can get them out of that house 50% of the time. If they live with you 50 percent of the time, you can drop that in half.
And so it is something that women thinking about divorce need to consider, that just getting them away from him some of that time. As you say, into the kind, loving country and culture, and getting them away from the chaotic, strange, manipulative culture, it makes a difference. What does the Bible say about divorce and marriage? I wanted to summarize myth three by saying, this is the basic rule of thumb. If the marriage is bad, divorce is good for kids.
This next myth often shows up in marriage at any cost organizations.
Myth 4: Divorce Shatters Kids’ Safety
Gretchen: They will say, kids suffer when moms and dads split up. They will say divorce itself shatters the child’s basic concept of safety. They want you to believe that legal experience will cause the children to suffer even more than they are now. Focus on the Family is one of the biggest purveyors of this particular myth. They tell abused wives it doesn’t matter how bad it is now, just the act of divorce will make it even worse for your kids.
They will suffer even more. Divorce, the legal act, shatters the kids basic concept of safety.
Anne: The Bible says to protect children, you know what really shatters their basic concept of safety? Repeated abuse. Can we just pause here to talk about Focus on the Family for a minute?
Gretchen: Yeah, sure.
Anne: So throughout your writing, you have specifically named Focus on the Family as a disseminator of incorrect information about the harms of divorce. They are hell bent on women staying in their marriage no matter what. And so the effect of this on victims of abuse is that it sides with the abuser. And victims of abuse have a hard time knowing what their options are for safety. In the light of this. Do you have any inkling as to what their underlying motivations are?
Gretchen: I can only guess. I’ve never sat in on their board meetings or executive committees, but I was a donor to them for years. I’ve given them thousands of dollars. And I’ve read all their books.
Motivations Behind Anti-Divorce Messaging
Gretchen: And I’ve listened to all their broadcasts, so I have a feel for the milieu of what’s going on over there. First of all, I think they make divorce a culture war issue. They want to say, we moral people, we religious people, we Christian people, we don’t divorce. That’s for quitters. That’s for people who just can’t go the distance. So they have a culture war reason to do it. This is a non-profit organization that depends on the donations of people like me and others.
So if you can say, ooh, the boogeyman, the enemy, is divorce. And those lazy quitters, those divorcees who follow the Hollywood divorce lifestyle, then you can bring in more money. And again, like I said, I’ve never been told this, but being a longtime listener, I feel it when I listen to their broadcasts. We’re the moral people in America. If you want your money to promote morality, send it to us at Focus on the Family.
Another issue is that they don’t believe the Bible says you can divorce for abuse. Now that’s because they ignore two verses in the Old Testament. In their mind, they don’t have a verse that specifically says that. Although there are several verses that do. Third, they love to say God hates divorce. Even in their articles on what to do if you discover your husband has been doing unthinkable child molesting to a child in your home.
It’s unbelievable, and I don’t get it. In that same article, where they talk about pedophiles being married to a pedophile. They say God hates divorce. They can’t even bring themselves to say, God hates child abuse. Get the heck out of there, divorce this guy.
What Does The Bible Say About Divorce And Marriage: Misinterpretations Of Research On Divorce
Gretchen: Nor do they say Jesus in the New Testament condoned divorce for sexual immorality. I think it’s either the culture war issue. They want to bring in the money from donors by promoting themselves as the only moral and decent voice in America. And then, you know, they have a religious angle too.
Anne: News to focus on the family. If in an article about someone abusing a child, you say the bible says divorce is the worst part. Instead of abuse, you do not have the moral high ground. So, now back to myth number four. We were talking about that before if you divorce, your kids will suffer even more than they are now, and it will never get better.
Gretchen: I want to talk about a book we discussed earlier called The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. This book has been so powerful in our society for 22 years. And like I said, one page kind of demeans divorcees as selfish. And just wanting to prance off to the grass is greener, and just find another partner. What people miss is the rest of the book. where Dr. Judith Wallerstein, the author, talks about the other side of divorce.
But why is this so important, why would I bring up a 22 year old book? It’s because I still hear people quoting it. I saw a major pastor quote it extensively last year. And so I jumped in and said, Hey, you missed the quote on page 300. Hey, you missed the quote on page 19, You’re getting it wrong. Hey, you’re misinterpreting what Dr. Wallerstein said in this book. This book is so powerful in our collective conscious, whether you’re religious or not.
Quotes From Dr. Wallerstein
Gretchen: Brand new textbooks that were just released in the last year on family sociology still have multiple paragraphs debunking Dr. Judith Wallerstein’s book. If these professors who are writing textbooks still consider her book to be a danger 22 years later, I think we need to address that.
Okay, so here’s what people need to know from Dr. Judith Wallerstein. She says, “Children raised in extremely unhappy or violent intact homes face misery in childhood and tragic challenges in adulthood.”
Here’s another quote. And this is from the same book, by the way. She says, “I’m not against divorce. How could I be? I’ve seen more examples of wretched, demeaning, and abusive marriage than most of my colleagues. I’m keenly aware of the suffering. I’m also aware that for many parents, the decision to divorce is the most difficult decision in their lives. They cry many a night before taking such a drastic step.”
Well, that kind of contradicts her one page in the book, where she accuses us all of being selfish. Here’s another from the introduction of that book. She says, “And of course, I’m aware that many voices on the radio, on television, and in certain religious circles say divorce is sinful. But I don’t know of any research, mine included, that says divorce is universally detrimental to children.”
I feel like she’s done so much damage. I want to read one more. “Although our overall findings are troubling and serious, we should not point the finger of blame at divorce per se. Indeed, divorce is often the only rational solution to a bad marriage. When people ask if they should stay for the sake of the children, I have to say, of course not.”
Cherry-Picking Data To Support Myths
Anne: The “damage” she has done wasn’t her. It was people taking the one thing she said, and then ignoring all the other things. I mean, they could have used the other stuff instead. What does the Bible say about divorce and marriage?
Gretchen: Right, it’s called cherry picking, and it’s also fraudulent when you say this is what this researcher believes. And then you ignore 90% of what she said, and you only cherry pick the one thing. And Focus on the Family is a big perpetrator of this. They’ve articles on their website today where they’ve removed four words from a quote. That dramatically changes the meaning. They’ve left whole sentences out of quotes that dramatically changed the quotes meaning.
They tell you that Wallerstein said children are destroyed. In reality, Wallerstein herself, who was indeed one of the most negative of the researchers. Still herself said 7 out of 10 kids of divorce came out fine. So, there’s just this misinformation. This myth is another one Focus on the Family loves to put out there.
Myth 5: Kids Will Be Abused By Stepparents:
Gretchen: I’ve seen it on several other websites, and it says that if you divorce and remarry. Their new stepdad will abuse your kids. And although it happens, and I don’t want to minimize this at all, there are definitely abusers out there. I am sure there are many on dating apps, and I’m sure there are many watching for women with young children. But it doesn’t happen as often as these organizations want you to believe.
For example, about 4 in 100 step parent families, so blended families, have reported an incident of child abuse of any kind. So it’s four in 100. If that’s what’s holding you in your abusive marriage, because your next relationship would have a four in 100 chance, I think you better rethink that.
Anne: But they’re abused now, so there’s a 100% chance they’ll be abused in your home where you live. If you don’t get divorced. You’re trading the 100 percent chance they currently have of being abused for a 4 in 100 chance of being abused by a stepparent, assuming you are legally required to get remarried? But you’re not required to be remarried. So you can just get divorced, and then that four out of a hundred chance goes to zero.
Gretchen: It’s all part of a pantheon of allegations they make that try to undermine single moms. You won’t have very much money, and your sons won’t have an example. Be ready for all of these to roll out for Father’s Day. You’re going to hear all of these in social media. Kids are always better off with a dad. Heck no, they’re not. Not if the dad has more than three of the seven antisocial traits. That father’s actually damaging the kids.
Studies On Kids’ Outcomes Post-Divorce
Gretchen: So I get exactly what you’re saying. And as a person who was single myself for 20 years after my divorce. And I raised my little children all by myself. We hear this all the time, oh, pregnancy, drinking, drugs, and everything. At least in my world, we were all told that our kids would fail in life if we got divorced, it does not say this in the bible. We were told it says divorce is bad. That they would drop out of school, do drugs, get pregnant, on and on.
But it turns out that when you look closely at those studies by family type. Kids raised by single parents usually do as well, or only slightly worse, like a smidgen worse than kids from two parent homes. So let me describe a few studies where kids of divorce do indeed fare just a tiny bit worse than kids from two parent married homes. The first is a study of substance abuse kids from ages 12 to 17.
And it turns out that only six in a hundred kids from single mother homes had a substance abuse problem. Compared to, get ready for this, only 5 in 100 kids from married two parent homes. That’s only 1 in 100 kids. That’s not much. Let’s look at behavior problems in school. Somebody sent me a text message and said, Oh my goodness, have you seen this horrible study? It says that kids from single parent homes are 60% more likely to be expelled or suspended from school.
Will Kids Thank You For Divorcing?
Gretchen: So I looked at the actual data from the research, and it said, okay, granted. Five in a hundred kids from married birth parent family ever get suspended or expelled, okay? How much higher do you think it is for kids from single? It’s only eight. Eight in a hundred kids from separated or divorced mom homes. So, they want us to believe it’s five in a hundred kids in two parent married homes. It must be fifty in a hundred kids from separated or divorced mom homes.
It’s not. It’s only three in a hundred more. Please stop, stop the fear bombing. Stop trying to coerce us and manipulate us to stay with these guys. There’s one last thing I want to talk about, and that is, will my kids thank me for divorcing? I did a poll last week of 3, 500 on Facebook. I asked, is at least one of your children glad you divorced? And eight in ten respondents said yes, at least one of my children supported the divorce.
One in ten said, well, I’ve never asked. And one in ten said, “No, none of my children were in favor or supportive of the divorce.”
We were always told that kids would hate their parents and resent you for the rest of their lives for divorcing. And that’s absolutely not true. What we have been told isn’t what it says. My kids would say, Mom, we’re so glad you divorced Dad. And they would also say, we don’t feel any different from any other kids. We feel just like kids from two parent homes.
The Bible Says Stay Away From Evil
Gretchen: Yeah, when researchers found kids of divorce who had serious problems later in life. Often they discovered they had behavior problems long before the divorce. Maybe as long as 12 years before the divorce. In other words, the destructive home caused the problems, not by the divorce itself.
Anne: Regardless of whether or not you’re considering divorce. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop will teach you the strategies you need to get to emotional safety. The Bible says we are to stay away from evil. Divorce may be a step on your journey to safety. Many women still face post separation and post divorce abuse. So make sure you get the strategies you need to create a safe home.
Gretchen, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Gretchen: Wow, it’s been a privilege, Anne. Thank you for having me.
Wooow, I just found btr.org, and it is the first page which puts into words what I have been feeling for the past 15 years.
I’m currently filing for divorce, which he does not want to accept so it will be a legal battle. Right now is “poor him”. He says he like Job, God gave him and God took everything from him.
I am devastated all over again when he’s able to convince people “it was not that bad. I didn’t hit her. It’s just online entertainment and masturbation – not cheating.”
I can finally use the words after being totally broken for two months and half to understand it was not my fault. I was not exaggerating. I am not too sensitive.
This is so hard, but I know divorcing him is the right thing. And your content puts everything I feel and think so clearly into words. Thank you!!
While praying for clarity and guidance one day, the book of Jude from the New Testament came to mind. I was unfamiliar with this book as it contains only one chapter. I turned to Jude and found so much clarity and felt great reassurance that my decision to “separate myself” from wickedness was correct and validated by God.
Thank you for all you do and share. I, too, am struggling with faith. This podcast/transcript hit some of my issues.
I was married 17 years the first time. Since I only had dated him since I was 16 (married at 18) I stayed because I had 3 children in my 20’s. With only a high school education and very young children, I stayed in the abusive marriage feeling never good enough for anyone else (not understanding that simply being single was a perfectly viable option). After the divorce we lived in poverty. I remarried 3 years later into an even more abusive relationship. This time I stayed 30 years until it ended with my husband wanting me dead. I found out he was never in recovery for sex addiction like he claimed. It came to a dramatic end when law enforcement SWAT team protected me, but he refused to surrender and shot himself. I’ve been in trauma therapy for years, but still feel an emptiness because I yearn for a healthy relationship with a man that doesn’t abuse me. I’m 67 now and time is running out for me to find a passionate but faithful man. Yes, I have learned to be alone with myself, but I still want a healthy relationship.