According to Divorcerate ( www.divorcerate.org ),in America, 50 per cent of first marriages end in divorce, while the figure goes up to 67 per cent in the case of second marriages, and 74 per cent in the case of third marriages. These figures were given by Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri. And this increase takes place after the trauma and hassle of the first and second marriage breakdown. Yet one would have expected the divorce rate to go down in subsequent marriages.

On June 12, I asked Totaldivorce whether this is a universal tendency, i.e. whether second and third marriages are everywhere more fragile than the first. Their response was: "After a first marriage has ended, people think they have figured it out. They now know what they want in their next partner, and have learned from all the mistakes. However, research shows just the opposite. Psychology Today reported that the rate of divorce in subsequent marriage is over 60 per cent. According to sociologists Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, about one quarter of second marriages end within the first five years."

Who said divorce is the solution to family breakdown?