The research conducted by the scientists covered 415 people. It was done in the form of a random multistage sampling with the limit of error of not more than 5%. Average age of the respondents was 39.6 years. The majority of the respondents (84.3%) divorced once, while 12.8% divorced twice, with the group with three or four times or people that did not specify the number of divorces were not statistically significant.
According to the data obtained by Elena Laktyukhina and Georgy Antonov, the objective socio-demographic characteristics of the marriage itself (duration, number of previous marriages, number of children in the marriage, matching of the spouses’ ages, education level, nationality and faith of the spouses), as well as characteristics of each spouse separately (gender, age, education level, wealth and level of income, etc.) have practically no effect on the stability of the relationship between the spouses and the sustainability of the marriage. Young people and middle-aged persons, wealthy and poor people, people with university or secondary education, belonging to the same of different social groups, with marriage duration of one-two years or many years with or without children showed the same probability of divorce. Only their subjective notions about marriage and their spouse as well as its degree of consistency or inconsistency of those completely individual subjective notions have dramatic impact on the stability of marital relationships among the residents of Russia. Researchers have detected this tendency for over 100 years in most Western countries, as well as for several decades in Russia. A great part of divorcees disapprove of divorce (in essence, they disapprove of their own marital behavior), as well as serial monogamy.
Consequently, on the one hand, the transfer from objective causes for a divorce to subjective ones has practically been completed in Russia. On the other hand, the system of traditional marital and family norms and values continues to be in effect, which contradicts the idea of the destruction of the traditional marriage as a social institution.
