A new poll issued by Gallup on Monday revealed two insights into how people regard divorce and an element that often surrounds it.
When people file for divorce, statistics tell us that it’s most often because of finances, but infidelity often plays a major role. In a study on moral acceptability, the polling organization found that this remains one of the most reviled actions that a spouse can commit from within the realm of marriage.
Divorce And Infidelity Numbers
Gallup looked at five key rankings of acceptability — highly acceptable, largely acceptable, contentious, largely unacceptable, and highly unacceptable. While decisions like filing divorce papers were seen with more acceptability than in years past (the current figure is 69 percent acceptable), infidelity remains the most highly unacceptable action that a person can commit. Only seven percent, Gallup noted, found “married men and women having an affair” to be okay.
Along party lines, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, were pretty much in agreement, though Democrats were most likely to be accepting of it (13 percent) versus Independents (7 percent) and Republicans (1 percent).
To put it in perspective, the next lowest regarded moral action was the cloning of humans, in which only 13 percent found it to be morally acceptable — as low as that is, it’s still about twice as acceptable as affairs, the polling shows.
Other Findings
Surprisingly, a married person who has more than one spouse at the same time is in safer moral waters than cheaters, indicating that the polygamy would have to be on-the-table and consensual among the involved parties in order to garner the 14 percent support that it received in the poll.
While Americans remain firmly entrenched against both marrying multiple partners at the same time and cheating on spouses, keep in mind that filing divorce forms used to be well below the 50 percent range when it came to acceptability. Today, Americans have almost embraced it.
Interesting finds, one and all. What do you all think about these issues?