This study explores the perceived importance of eight barriers to divorce, their correlation with objective circumstances, and the effectiveness of both perceived barriers and objective indicators of barriers as predictors of subsequent divorce. The findings indicate that married individuals perceive a variety of barriers to be very important to keeping one's marriage intact. However, perceived barriers do not correlate substantially with objective circumstances nor are they very effective in deterring subsequent divorce—especially after accounting for respondents' divorce proneness. Objective indicators have slightly stronger associations with subsequent divorce but do not weaken the conclusion that barriers are not very effective deterrents to divorce.
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