I have long wondered why, when conservatives (and others) lament the apparent decline in the institution of marriage, no conservatives advance the notion of amending the no-fault divorce laws, which were passed in just about every state a little more than 40 years ago. It turns out, I find from the indefatigable Megan McArdle, that some conservatives are actually doing so. McArdle links to a blogpost by Rod (Crunchy Cons) Dreher, which makes reference to such efforts, which in turn links to an article by the Center for American Progress‘s Scott Keyes in the Washington Post. Keyes cites, with scarcely concealed disapproval, attacks on no-fault divorce advocated by the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage and legislative proposals in more than a dozen states.

Keyes gives a useful history of no-fault divorce. The first such law was passed in California in 1969 and signed by the (reluctantly) divorced Gov. Ronald Reagan. By 1979, 45 states had such laws; four more passed them by 1985; and the last holdout, New York, passed one in 2010. (Why should New York be such a holdout? Well, until the late 1960s, New York allowed divorce only in cases of adultery, and the state never ratified the 19th Amendment giving women the vote. Being liberal on most things today doesn’t mean having been liberal on many things going back a ways.) “No-fault divorce has been a success,” declares Keyes, and he declines to accept the widespread evidence that divorce is bad for children in most cases. He mentions in passing the interesting fact that two-thirds of divorces are sought by women (we aren’t talking about same-sex marriages here), and so he characterizes any lengthening of the waiting period for divorce as anti-woman. He points out correctly that only a few couples have engaged in “covenant marriages,” with stricter requirements for divorce, authorized by laws in Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona. Overall Keyes promotes a libertarian story line: We have moved from making divorce very hard to making divorce very easy. And he points out that only a few laws limiting no-fault divorce have actually been passed — a 2007 Louisiana law extending the waiting period for parents from six months to a year, a 2011 Arizona law allowing one party to a divorce to extend the waiting period to four months and a 2012 Utah law restoring a 90-day waiting period and requiring that parents with children under 18 must take a class before a court can grant custody or financial orders. So while there is a move against no-fault divorce, it has had very little success.