Divorce among older adults, often referred to as "grey divorce," is becoming increasingly common in the United States. While overall divorce rates have declined among younger couples over the past four decades, the rate has risen or stabilized for those aged 50 and older. Adults 65 and above are now the only age group with a growing divorce rate. Today, about 36% of divorces involve people who are 50 or older, compared to just 8.7% in 1990.
Jocelyn Elise Crowley, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University and author of Gray Divorce: What We Lose and Gain from Mid-life Splits, has studied how these late-in-life divorces affect adult children and family dynamics. In her research involving interviews with 40 men and 40 women experiencing grey divorce, Crowley found that women often face an “economic penalty” after divorce due to career breaks taken for childcare.
Men experience what Crowley calls a “social penalty.” She explains that wives typically serve as the “kin-keepers,” managing social connections within families. After a grey divorce, men may lose their social networks and have less contact with their children. According to Crowley: “Women are basically the social directors of family life still in 2025, and when that goes away men become like islands in the sea.”
She adds that divorced husbands go through significant grief following the break-up: “[They] expressed a lot of sadness.”
Research shows that after grey divorces, adult children tend to align more closely with their mothers—a pattern known as the matrifocal tilt. This tendency has been observed not only among young children due to custody arrangements but also among grown children across various countries and decades.
Crowley notes that relationships can recover over time: some fathers reconnect with their children even after long periods without contact.
Experts suggest that adult children affected by their parents’ late-in-life divorces may benefit from joining support groups to reduce feelings of isolation.
However, not all parent-child relationships suffer following grey divorce. Some adult children report feeling relieved or supportive if they had witnessed conflict between their parents while growing up. Over time, even strained relationships can mend. As Greenwood observes: “Even for those relationships that were negatively strained, over time, the strained relationships mended.”
