possibly be some connection between the two facts. As we have already
seen, the higher standards of living make later marriage necessary. Men
in the professions do not think of marriage nowadays until thirty, or
until they have an independent income. Now, how may the higher age of
marriage possibly increase the instability of the family? It may do so
in this way. After thirty, psychologists tell us, one's habits are
relatively fixed and hard to change. People who marry after thirty,
therefore, usually find greater difficulty in adjusting themselves to
each other than people who marry somewhat younger; and every marriage
necessarily involves an adjustment of individuals to each other. This
being so, we can readily understand that late marriages are more apt to
result in faulty adjustments in the family relation than marriages that
take place in early maturity.

(8) Another cause of the increase of divorce in the United States that
has been given is the popularization of law which has accompanied the
growth of democratic institutions. Law was once the prerogative of
special classes, and courts were rarely appealed to except by the noble
or wealthy classes; but with the growth of democratic institutions there
has been a great spread of legal education, especially through the
modern newspaper, and consequently a greater participation in the
remedies offered by the courts for all sorts of wrongs, real or
imagined. Many people, for example, who would not have thought of
divorce a generation ago, now know how divorce may be secured and are
ready to secure it. However, it would seem as though this cause of the
increase of divorce might have operated to a greater extent twenty-five
or thirty years ago than it has during the last two decades, for it
cannot be said that since the nineties there has been much increase of
legal education among the masses, or much greater popularization of the
law.