So we are having a bit of fun with our divorce picture. But the truth about our high divorce rates is a different story.

Did you know that the so-called "50% divorce rate" is a myth, and marriage is alive and well and flourishing in the USA?

Nearly 70% of first marriages manage to last until one of the partners dies. The wedlock-is-dead advocates are simply divorced from reality.

They are challenged head on by two professors from the University of Pennsylvania in their Sept 2007 column in the New York Times.

"The great myth about divorce is that marital breakup is an increasing threat to American families, with each generation finding their marriages less stable than those of their parents," Professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers write.

“The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began in the 1970s.”

Stevenson and Wolfers cite specific numbers: “The narrative or rising divorce is also completely at odds with counts of divorce certificates, which show the divorce rate as having peaked at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married couples in 1979 and to have fallen by 2005 to 16.7…. The facts are that divorce is down, and today’s marriages are more stable than they have been in decades.”

And who are we to contradict the journal of record, the New York Times.