While I can't say anything about statistical odds or why things happen the way they happen... I suppose one thing I can say on the topic of divorce is that... I find it interesting (speaking from personal experience here) that... even if a person grew up in a household with two married parents who were never married to anyone else and never divorced... in a way, divorce can still play a huge impact on the entire family dynamic.
I have found that, especially during my twenties, I was consistently drawn to personality types who were either divorced or had parents who were divorced. There was just... something about the emotional side of things that drew me in and felt like familiar ground, I guess?
My dad came from a crazy family where his parents divorced, and one of his sisters (who was conceived when his mother cheated...) was a wild child who drank, did booze, and got pregnant three times by three different men and didn't even take responsibility for the children until years later.
My mother came from a.... pretty solid household I suppose, but everyone got lost in the shuffle because they were basically two parents and four children living in a small place on a very tight budget. And Mom, while an awesome person, has always had a flaw of being a bit... starry-eyed.
My parents pretty much got engaged soon after first meeting, and their "courtship phase" consisted of seeing each other maybe once or twice a month for about a year until they finally got hitched. And a lot of the BS from dad's side of the family made things rough as my parents started out their lives together, and were probably ill-prepared for a lot of things... especially as dad's side of the family liked to interfere or see what they could get out of us.
In the end... I guess I'm sorta saying that there are areas where you can end up growing up feeling.... maybe SLIGHTLY like you know what it's like to have divorced parents... I mean, I am largely ignorant because I don't know what it's like to have to go through the stuff where one of your parents moves out, everything gets dragged through court for months, and everybody decides who gets what, including primary custody of the kids. I am extremely blessed that I never had to go through any of that, and despite their dysfunction and not getting at times, my parents never split and even when their arguments got nasty.... neither one ever left the house. The worst they did was go into separate rooms (not much difference there... since that's pretty much what they did most of the time when I was a kid anyway.)
But... maybe it could be said that I at least know what it's like to go through the rippled effect as a result of divorce. Some of it can carry through into the next generation... the stupid decisions and attitudes that the first pair of people had (my grandparents on dad's side) who acted like morons and got divorced.
Sometimes... I wonder what really happened back then. I know that my grandfather was apparently the greatest A-hole who ever lived, constantly taunting other people and putting them down in any way possible. In some ways, it's easy to look back and just think, that guy was mean and cruel. But sometimes.... (Even though I will probably never know) I can't help but wonder... what made him that way? Was he just naturally mean? Was he raised that way? (It may also say something that after he divorced Dad's mother, he chose another woman who was just as nasty and spiteful as himself... maybe like attracts like.)
I sometimes think that maybe part of the problem throughout the last few generations has been... well, some things depend on how individuals were raised. There have been, unfortunately, some cultures where they felt like mistreating a woman was just something that was okay to do, and apparently acting like an all-around jerk was just part of "being a man" or something. Not in every case, but just in some cases. There could still be some problems like that even in this day and age.
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