I think it is everything you named. Women are in better financial positions, women now are looked down on for putting up with abuse, it is more socially acceptable to divorce. In fact I would go as far to say that there is social pressure to divorce if you are unhappy. Less influence from religious expectations. Although, I know many many Christians, religious Christians who have been divorced and they never mention worrying about their church frowning upon it. Only Catholics I know talk about their family or churchmembers being very dissapproving. The Protestants I know, even Evangelicals, do emphasize keeping amarriage together, they have couples retreats, things like that, but at the same time it doesn’t seem the same as my Catholic friends. I also think because people are more aware of the world. All different things out there and what they want to do. If one spouse is stifling the other they leave, years ago I think fewer people had desires that were very adventurous and ambitious. Life had different expectations.
@bkcunningham I don’t know how much you really meant to generalize, but when you say people today don’t think twice about children of unwed parents and people not thinking twice about leaving their children, my feeling is maybe, maybe at the most 50% if people don’t think twice about those things. Many people who are divirced suffered for years and really thought through how it would affect their kids, and even their extended family, let alone their spuse and themselves. I don’t know many people who just decide in a moment to divorce without considering how it will affect their children. People still look down on multiple half siblings born to an unwed mother who have different fathers. Some people might think that is normal, but a lot of people don’t. I know more than one coupe who has stayed together because ofbtheor children. I also know men who wound up staying, because they couldn’t stand to not be in the same house as their children. Some of them left, separated temporarily or were thrown out, but they go back primarily because of their children. Now, many states favor equal custody, so maybe that has changed the dynamic a little.