Religious service attendance, divorce, and remarriage among U.S. nurses in mid and late life

Abstract

Prior research has suggested religious participation can promote marital satisfaction and stability. However, current literature has mainly focused on early life divorce, and used cross-sectional data, leaving open the question of the directionality of effects. We evaluated the prospective associations between service attendance and marital stability in mid and late life considering either 1) divorce or separation; or 2) remarriage, as separate outcomes. Data were drawn from the Nurses’ Health Study, a large prospective cohort study that consisted of US female nurses in their 50s at study enrollment, with repeated measures of service attendance and marital status over 14 years of follow-up from 1996–2010. During follow up, among 66,444 initially married nurses who were mainly Christians, frequent service attendance was associated with 50% lower risk of divorce (95% CI: 32%, 63%), and 52% lower risk of either divorce or separation (95%CI: 37%, 63%). Among initially divorced or separated women, frequent service attendance was not associated with subsequent likelihood of remarriage; however, among widowed women, women who attended services frequently had 49% increased likelihood of remarriage (95% CI: 13%, 97%) compared to those women who did not. The study provides evidence that in this cohort of US nurses, frequent service attendance is associated with lower risk of becoming divorced in mid- and late- life, and increased likelihood of remarriage among widowed nurses, but not among divorced or separated nurses.