The United States has consistently led the world in the number of marriages each year, with a marriage rate roughly twice as high as those in other industrialized countries. It has also consistently led the world in the divorce rate. During the 1960s, the divorce rate in the United States began to climb rapidly. In 1960, there were nine divorces for every thousand married women; by 1970, the number had shot up to fifteen per thousand. Divorces peaked in 1980 at twenty-three per thousand and have since leveled off at twenty-one per thousand married women in the early 1990s.

Concerned about the country's high divorce rate, clergy, academics, sociologists, politicians, and others have called for measures to slow it down. One proposal is to return to fault-based divorce, which was the law of the land prior to 1969. Divorce then was granted only in specific circumstances, generally limited to infidelity, physical or...