Welcome to this week’s UK Marriage News
Headlines
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Better Mental Health For All
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Study finds couples' division of paid, unpaid labour linked to risk of divorce
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For a Sweet Pea
Government and Political
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Better Mental Health For All
This report from the Faculty of Public Health and Mental Health Foundation focuses on what can be done individually and collectively to enhance the mental health of individuals, families
and communities by using a public health approach says OnePlusOne.
Public mental health is fundamental to public health in general because mental health is a determinant and consequence of physical health as well as a resource for living. A public
mental health approach is concerned with promoting mental wellbeing, preventing future mental health problems and with recovery from mental health problems. The Faculty of Public Health has published this resource to encourage a proportionate universal approach
with a focus on the promotion of mental wellbeing and on high level support for those at risk of poor mental health and mental health problems.
The report acknowledges how supportive policy is emerging across the UK, but
the full potential for public mental health is yet to be addressed. Provision on the ground of interventions and services that support public mental health has been badly affected by austerity measures. The economic and social costs of mental health problems
are very high. The report also outlines a list of key actions that all professionals working in public health and beyond can take to promote mental wellbeing and prevent mental health problems.
Research and Public Opinion
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Study finds couples' division of paid, unpaid labour linked to risk of divorce
A new study suggests that financial factors, including couples' overall resources and wives' ability to support themselves in the event of a divorce, are not predictive of whether
marriages last. Rather, it is couples' division of labour -- paid and unpaid -- that is associated with the risk of divorce
reports Science Daily.
"My results suggest that, in general, financial factors do not determine whether couples stay together or separate," said study author Alexandra Killewald, a professor of sociology
at Harvard University. "Instead, couples' paid and unpaid work matters for the risk of divorce, even after adjusting for how work is related to financial resources."
Titled, "Money, Work, and Marital Stability: Assessing Change in the Gendered Determinants of Divorce," the study uses nationally representative data on more than 6,300 different-sex
couples, both spouses age 18 to 55, from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine what effect, if any, couples' division of labour, their overall financial resources, and wives' economic prospects following divorce have on marital stability.
As part of her study, which appears in the August issue of the American Sociological Review, Killewald compared couples married in 1974 or earlier with couples married in 1975 or later
to explore whether the effects, or lack thereof, of these factors changed over time. Killewald found that, in both the old and new cohorts, financial factors did not play a role in divorce. On the other hand, while the division of labour did affect marital
outcomes in both cohorts, there was some variation in terms of what division of labour was better for marriage stability.
For couples married before 1975, the higher the percentage of housework a woman did, the less likely her marriage was to end in divorce. For the more recent cohort, however, that was
no longer the case. "For couples married more recently, expectations for the division of housework between spouses appear to have changed, so that men are expected to contribute at least somewhat to household labour," said Killewald, who noted that, even in
the more recent marriage cohort, wives do more than 70 percent of the housework, on average. "In general, men seem to be contributing a little more than they used to, and these contributions may now be expected and appreciated by wives."
Killewald found that, for couples married after 1974, neither wives' full-time employment nor sharing the housework more evenly was associated with the risk of divorce. In this cohort,
husbands' full-time employment was an important factor in marital stability, with the risk of divorce higher for men who were not employed full-time.
"For contemporary couples, wives can combine paid and unpaid labour in various ways without threatening the stability of their marriage," according to Killewald, who said that while
the gender revolution and the feminist movement have allowed women to take on traditionally male-dominated roles and responsibilities, men's roles and responsibilities have not expanded or diversified proportionately.
"While contemporary wives need not embrace the traditional female homemaker role to stay married, contemporary husbands face higher risk of divorce when they do not fulfil the stereotypical
breadwinner role, by being employed full-time," Killewald said.
Regarding financial factors, by finding that couples' overall resources and wives' economic prospects following divorce did not determine whether marriages lasted, Killewald's study
dispels the theory that attributes the spike in divorce rates to women's increased financial independence. "The fact that divorce rates rose during the second half of the 20th century at the same time when women were moving into the labour force has prompted
some speculation that marital stability has declined because women no longer 'need' to be married for financial security," Killewald said. "For some, this implies that women's entry into the work force has come at the expense of stable marriages. My results
do not suggest any trade-off of that kind."
Though changing gender roles have afforded women greater flexibility in terms of labour without jeopardizing their marriages, the study indicates that men have not been granted similar
freedom. "Often when scholars or the media talk about work-family policies or work-family balance, they focus mostly on the experiences of women," Killewald said. "Although much of the responsibility for negotiating that balance falls to women, my results
suggest one way that expectations about gender and family roles and responsibilities affect men's lives, too: men who aren't able to sustain full-time work face heightened risk of divorce."
In terms of the study's policy implications, Killewald said her research may help guide policymakers who are considering the societal impact of policies that provide financial support
to unmarried women. "Because I do not find that couples are more likely to divorce when women are better able to sustain themselves financially in the event of a divorce, public financial support -- to divorced women and other groups -- such as the earned
income tax credit (EITC) or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is unlikely to heighten divorce rates," Killewald said.
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Want a Stressful—but Joyful—Life? Have Children!
With national fertility rates languishing below replacement levels in recent years, Americans might well conclude that many adults now view children as a burden, not a blessing
says WCF. Such a negative view of children finds both confirmation and refutation in a study recently conducted by scholars at Princeton and Stony Brook Universities. Although this study shows that living with children
exposes adults to stresses not felt by peers living without children, it also shows that adults living with children experience decidedly more joy than do peers living without them.
The authors of the new study parse Gallup survey data collected from 1.77 million adults between 2008 and 2012, focusing largely on "the subsample of adults aged from 34 to 46, more
than 90% of whom are the parents of the children who live with them." These surveys incorporate both a life-evaluation metric and measures of day-to-day "hedonic experience" (that, is pleasurable experience). Using a wide range of indices to compare the well-being
of adults ages 34 to 46 with children with that of peers without children, the researchers conclude that "generally, and with the exception of stress, all outcomes are more favourable (higher levels of positive outcomes, and lower levels of negative outcomes)
when there are children in the household." Given the data they have on relative household income, the researchers further conclude that having children in the home is associated with "substantial positive effects on life evaluation, on reducing sadness, worry,
anger, and physical pain, and very large effects on happiness, enjoyment, and smiling."
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Even thinking about marriage gets young people to straighten up
You don’t have to get married to settle down and leave behind your wild ways – you just have to expect to get married soon
says Ohio State University. Researchers found that teenagers and young adults who expected to get married within the next five years reported committing fewer delinquent acts in the next
year than those who weren’t thinking about wedding bells.
While other studies have shown that people commit fewer crimes when they get married, this is the first to show that people straighten up their act even before they tie the knot. “You
may start to act married even before the wedding,” said Rachel Arocho, lead author of the study and a research fellow in human development and family science at The Ohio State University.
The results show the importance of marriage in today’s society, even though many Americans are delaying the relationship milestone until they’re older. “This is a reminder that marriage
still matters,” said Claire Kamp Dush, co-author and professor of human sciences at Ohio State. “Just the expectation of marriage may be enough to change some people’s behaviour.”
The study appears online in the Journal of Marriage and Family and will be published in a future print edition. The researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
1997. This study included 7,057 people who were 15 to 20 years old when the data for this study was collected in 2000 and 2001. The NLSY97 is conducted by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The participants were asked in 2000 and 2001 to estimate the percent chance that they would be married in five years. They were also asked whether they had committed certain delinquent
acts – including property theft, personal assault, drug dealing and property destruction – since the last time they were interviewed for the study.
On average, participants in 2000 thought there was a 43 percent chance they would be married within five years, increasing to 48 percent in 2001.
In 2000, there were 1,492 young people in the study who reported any delinquent acts and they averaged 1.74 such acts in total. In 2001, participants reported slightly fewer delinquent
acts, with 1,273 reporting an average of 1.62 incidents of misconduct.
The key finding was that young people with higher marital expectations in 2000 had lower levels of delinquent activity in 2001. Somewhat surprisingly, the researchers did not find
a link in the opposite direction: Delinquent activity did not seem to be strongly associated with later marital expectations. “It seems that young people think of marital expectations independently of their current participation in delinquency or crime,” Kamp
Dush said.
There are good reasons why people who expect to marry may be avoiding a life of delinquency, Arocho said. They probably feel they have to watch their behaviour to gain social acceptance
and be seen as “marriage material,” she said. Plus, people with a job, good income and education all have a better opportunity to get married – and delinquency stands in the way of achieving these goals. “If you’re thinking of getting married soon, you may
do things differently and you act more like an adult,” Arocho said.
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15 relationship facts everybody should know before getting married
OK – it’s the quiet season so we decided to include this
from Business Insider!
You can drive yourself crazy deciding whether to marry your partner. Can you two really survive a lifetime together? I mean, you adore them — but they constantly leave hair in the
shower. They tell the worst jokes — but they're always there to comfort you after a hard day.
Perhaps it would help to turn to the scientific research, which has pinpointed specific factors that can make or break a romantic relationship. Below, we've rounded up 15 nontrivial
things you might want to keep in mind before hiring a wedding planner.
If you wait until you're 23 to commit, you're less likely to get divorced.
A 2014 University of North Carolina at Greensboro study found that American women who cohabitate or get married at age 18 have a 60% divorce rate, but women who wait until 23 to make
either of those commitments have a divorce rate around 30%. "The longer couples waited to make that first serious commitment [cohabitation or marriage], the better their chances for marital success," The Atlantic reported.
The 'in love' phase lasts about a year.
The honeymoon phase doesn't go on forever. According to a 2005 study by the University of Pavia in Italy, it lasts about a year. After that, levels of a chemical called "nerve growth
factor," which is associated with intense romantic feelings, start to fall.
Helen Fisher, a psychologist and relationship expert, told Business Insider that it's unclear when exactly the "in love" feeling starts to fade, but it does so "for good evolutionary
reasons," she said, because "it's very metabolically expensive to spend an awful lot of time just focusing on just one person in that high-anxiety state."
Two people can be compatible — or incompatible — on multiple levels.
Back in the 1950s and '60s, Canadian psychologist Eric Berne introduced a three-tiered model for understanding a person's identity. He found that each of us have three "ego states"
operating at once:
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The parent: What you've been taught
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The child: What you have felt
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The adult: What you have learned
When you're in a relationship, you relate on each of those levels:
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The parent: Do you have similar values and beliefs about the world?
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The child: Do you have fun together? Can you be spontaneous? Do you think your partner's hot? Do you like to travel together?
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The adult: Does each person think the other is bright? Are you good at solving problems together?
While having symmetry across all three is ideal, people often get together to "balance each other." For instance, one may be nurturing and the other playful.
The happiest marriages are between best friends.
A 2014 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that marriage does indeed lead to increased well-being, mainly thanks to friendship. Controlling for premarital happiness, the
study concluded that marriage leads to increased well-being — and it does so much more for those who have a close friendship with their spouses. Friendship, the paper found, is a key mechanism that could help explain the causal relationship between marriage
and life satisfaction. The closer a couple are in age, the less likely they are to get divorced.
A study of 3,000 Americans who had ever been married found that age discrepancies correlate with friction in marriages.
The Atlantic's Megan Garber reports: "A one-year discrepancy in a couple's ages, the study found, makes them 3 percent more likely to divorce (when compared to their same-aged counterparts);
a 5-year difference, however, makes them 18 percent more likely to split up. And a 10-year difference makes them 39 percent more likely."
If you get excited for your partner's good news, you'll have a better relationship.
In multiple studies, couples that actively celebrated good news (rather than actively or passively dismissed it) have had a higher rate of relationship well-being. For example, say
a wife comes home to her partner and shares an accomplishment. An "active-constructive" response would be the best, according to Amie Gordon, a social psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley:
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An active-constructive response from the partner would be enthusiastic support: "That's great, honey! I knew you could do it. You've been working so hard."
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A passive-constructive response would be understated support: a warm smile and a simple "that's good news."
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An active-destructive response would be a statement that demeaned the event: "Does this mean you are going to be gone working even longer hours now? Are you sure you can handle it?"
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Finally, a passive-destructive response would virtually ignore the good news: "Oh, really? Well, you won't believe what happened to me on the drive home today!"
Resentment builds quickly in couples who don't tackle chores together.
Over 60% of Americans in one poll said that taking care of chores plays a crucial role in having a successful marriage. "It's Not You, It's the Dishes" co-author Paula Szuchman recommends
a system where each person specializes in the chores they're best at.
"If you really are better at the dishes than remembering to call the in-laws, then that should be your job," she writes. "It'll take you less time than it'll take him, and it'll take
him less time to have a quick chat with mom than it would take you, which means in the end, you've saved quite a bit of collective time."
We have higher standards for marriage than ever before.
Northwestern psychologist Eli Finkel has found that marriage in America has gone through three stages:
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Institutional marriage (from the nation's founding until 1850)
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Companionate marriage (from 1851 to 1965)
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Self-expressive marriage (from 1965 onward)
Before 1850, couples got hitched for the sake of food, shelter, and protection. Then with the Industrial Revolution people had more leisure time, Finkel says, so we started looking
for companionship in our partners. The '60s brought a yearning for personal fulfilment through relationships, which we continue to strive for today.
You'll never get to know your partner perfectly.
After dating someone for a couple of years, you might feel like you know everything about them: what kind of toothpaste they use, which TV series they guiltily binge-watch, which foods
nauseate them. But you probably don't know them quite as well as you think you do.
According to a 1997 study, couples who had been together longer expressed more confidence in how well they knew each other. But as it turns out, relationship length wasn't related
to accuracy. Even when participants had to guess how their partners would rate themselves on intelligence, athleticism, and attractiveness, they were only right about 30% of the time.
If you're moving in to 'test' the relationship, you're probably not so confident in it.
A 2009 study led by researchers at the University of Denver found that most couples moved in for other reasons besides test-driving their relationship before marriage.
But couples who did report testing the relationship were more likely to experience a number of negative emotions. For example, among testers, men scored higher on measures of depression
and anxiety, and women scored higher on measures of abandonment anxiety. Both groups were less confident in the relationship.
In a recent Psychology Today column, one of the study's authors explains what these findings might mean: "It seems to us that many people who think about testing their relationship
by cohabiting already know, on some level, what the grade of that test may be; they are hoping that the answer looks better over time."
If you're economically dependent on your spouse, you're more likely to cheat on them.
Contrary to popular belief, cheating isn't necessarily more common among high-earning couples. The link between income and infidelity is more nuanced than that. Recent research from
the University of Connecticut suggests that a person who is economically dependent on their spouse is more likely to be unfaithful — and that's especially true for a man who relies financially on a woman. Interestingly, when women are the breadwinners, they're
less likely to cheat. When men are the breadwinners, they're more likely to cheat.
We think everyone except our own partner is cheating.
You can't trust anyone — except your boo, right? A 2015 University of Calgary study found that heterosexual undergrads think the average member of the opposite sex has about a 40%
chance of cheating on their partner. But those same participants said their own partner had only a 5% chance of cheating. The rate at which participants said they'd ever really cheated on their partner? 9%.
Couples who appreciate each other are more likely to stay together.
Gratitude may be a key to lasting relationships.
In one University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study, researchers had participants keep private daily diaries in which they recorded things their partner had done for them and
how it had made them feel. As it turns out, couples who were more grateful toward each other felt that the relationship was stronger. Meanwhile, another series of studies, led by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, found that more grateful
couples were more likely to still be together nine months later.
Eventually you realize that you're not one person.
Once you start living together, you may realize that you have different priorities and tolerances — like, for instance, what does or doesn't constitute a mess. "People have to come
to terms with the reality that 'we really are different people,'" says Ellyn Bader, a couples therapist. "'You are different from who I thought you were or wanted you to be. We have different ideas, different feelings, different interests.'"
It's a stressful — and necessary — evolution.
When it comes to sex, quality is more important than quantity. Business Insider's Jessica Orwig reported on a fascinating Carnegie Mellon study on the link between how often you have
sex with your partner and how happy you are. Researchers split a bunch of heterosexual, married couples into two groups: For 90 days, half continued with their normal sex schedule and half had sex twice as often. When the researchers measured how each group
felt at the end of the experiment, the group that had doubled their sex frequency was in fact slightly less happy. As the lead researcher behind the study told The New York Times, if you want to be happy, focus on quality over quantity.
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Divorce continues to take a psychological toll on kids
Divorce rates are down, with marriages becoming more enduring in the last decade. But are we getting any better at managing the effect on children,
asks the Guardian?
In the early 1920s, a list of exceptionally bright children was assembled for a study about growing up as a genius. These individuals became known to psychologists, affectionately,
as the “termites”, after the Stanford researcher – Professor Frederick Terman – who began the study. The termites completed many surveys over their lifetimes, and the vast majority of the group have now died.
Their death certificates reveal that those whose parents divorced before their 21st birthday lived four years fewer than those whose parents stayed together until at least that point.
Male termites typically lived to 76 as opposed to 80; female termites made it to about 82, instead of 86.
Although this group was a bit different to the rest of us – they each scored a minimum of 135 in high school IQ tests – brains and possible dweebish tendencies don’t appear to have
exacerbated the impact of parental divorce. Overall, the termites handled life no better or worse than the US population as a whole. They committed suicide, developed alcoholism and themselves got divorced at the national rates.
So if parental divorce reduced longevity among the termites, it suggested worrying things about how divorce might affect all kids in the long run. The research subjects’ early deaths
were pinned on higher rates of smoking, perhaps indicating a greater lifelong psychological stress following parental divorce.
But is this finding relevant today? After all, the termites experienced their parents splitting up during a period when divorce was much less common and much more stigmatized than
it is now. Moreover, since that time, the reasons for divorce and the profile of couples most likely to divorce have changed in all manner of ways. So it seems reasonable to expect that whatever may have led these termites to feel stress more intensely than
the other termites is no longer part and parcel of watching your parents split.
Researchers have a lot of disagreements about divorce trends. Most agree that divorce is less common today due to a rise in the age at which people first marry. But some experts believe
that divorce rates in the US reached a peak among couples who married in the 1970s, and ever since the 1980s marriages have been more enduring. Other researchers, working with a different set of surveys, counter that the drop-off in divorce in recent decades
has been overstated. In their view, divorce seems to have declined among younger couples, but it doubled in the two decades before 2008 among people over 35.
Divorce used to be the preserve of the upper classes. But as it has become legally less onerous, and its financial and social costs have been reduced, lower class couples have composed
an ever greater share of divorcees.
Similarly, a highly educated wife used to be linked to greater odds of divorce, but that pattern has at least weakened in European countries taken together, and reversed in the most
developed ones. In the US, too, women with a college degree are today far less likely to divorce than women who haven’t surpassed a high school degree. College educated women are also happier in their marriages and with their family life.
But what do these patterns have to do with how much divorce affects kids later in life? To answer that question requires comparing divorce trends to divorcees’ kids’ outcomes over
time – outcomes that can reveal their levels of stress and how they have responded to stress as they have matured.
Various studies attempt this, but none over as long a period as an analysis of Swedish children. Astonishingly, Swedish records allow for comparison of people born more than a century
apart, since face-to-face interviews using the same set of questions have been posed to Swedes born from 1892 onwards. Interviewees have been asked about their living arrangements growing up, about the extent of parental discord that they recall, and all about
their mental health issues into adulthood, from insomnia to depression.
Many divorce trends over the 20th century suggest that children, on average, should have experienced noticeably less distress over time from their parents’ marriage ending. As divorce
has become more common, it has become more socially acceptable. Female employment has risen and the welfare state has grown, meaning that single mothers are comparatively more able to provide for their offspring today than in the past. Custody arrangements
have also changed, and children whose parents divorced in recent years are more likely than ever to maintain relationships with both parents.
But shockingly, divorcees’ kids in Sweden have seen no improvements in their relative educational attainment and psychological wellbeing. To this day, they are worse off by these measures
than kids whose parents stay together. (And Sweden is, of course, a country with a far more generous welfare state and more liberal attitudes than most.)
The ongoing gap in educational performance appears to be due to families of a lower economic class becoming more prone to splitting up over the decades. Kids born into lower income
families have always tended to do worse at school, so that trend isn’t due to divorce per se.
But the stubbornly lower psychological wellbeing of Swedish divorcees’ kids can’t be pinned entirely on income. Socioeconomics may explain part of it, but, instead, lots of family
arguments appear to leave long term traces.
In short, the impacts of parental divorce are often subtle and long lasting. From the Stanford geniuses to Swedes born in the 1990s, the evidence suggests that kids whose parents have
or are about to split up need more support than we realize.
Partner News
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OnePlusOne Research and Policy Digest – July 2016
More reading for your summer holiday!!
OnePlusOne’s monthly roundup of the key research and policy news to emerge from the field of relationships, including the latest journal articles of interest to family and relationships practitioners and researchers.
Forthcoming conferences and events
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Forthcoming conferences
Details of all forthcoming conferences can always be found
under our listing at 2-in-2-1
Consultations and Campaigns
Below is our running list of current and recent consultations and campaigns. New items or those requiring action are highlighted. The Reference numbers are to the newsletter where
we covered the subject.
Soap Box!!
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For a Sweet Pea
Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unlikely things or places! This week it was the state of a climbing plant in a rather neglected garden! Let me explain.
Some plants, things like Clematis, Honeysuckle or even Sweet Peas, thrive when they have some structure on which they can hang. The sad plant in the garden had none, and so its various
tendrils ran out from the roots seeking support – it was a tangled mess when we found it! Seeing the problem we added a couple of good stakes and tied them to a nearby fence. Over the next couple of weeks the plant suddenly thrived – it climbed the stakes
and attached itself to the fence and is now growing strongly – given time I’m certain it will be full of blooms too.
So what has this to do with marriage or families?? Well I think there are some really useful models or frameworks for thought to be found in what a plant like a Sweet Pea needs to
thrive (well, she is Mrs P after all!!).
The first is structure. In our relationship there are all sorts of structures. Perhaps most obviously there is some form of home – without a safe place in which to feed and sleep sustaining
a relationship, or a family, is incredibly hard. But there are other less obvious structures too. There is the wider family – knowing how I relate to the different generations, cousins, etc help give a sense of identity and rootedness – a sense of belonging.
Then there are the structures of shared ritual and rules – the “way we do Christmas”, the boundaries of what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour – all these provide a framework in which individuals be they spouse or children can thrive. Without them we
become directionless – our lives ramble.
Of course plants need other things to grow – notably a source of nutrition and water. Again in many ways there are parallels in our marriages and families. As parents we have the responsibility
to help our youngsters develop intellectually, emotionally and physically. To do so we work with our schools to educate and stimulate learning. Our behaviour as a couple has huge impact on the emotional development from the earliest stages of attachment through
the years the kids spend watching us, and so absorbing lessons on how to argue, forgive and love each other. Physically too we feed our young, take them to the park, play, exercise and encourage as they grow. And these patterns are not just with the young
– when I reflect on my commitment to Liz to enable her to be “the best Liz she can be” I can identify things I have done (or should have done
L!) to encourage her growth too.
For a plant there is a third part to their flourishing too – they need sunlight and oxygen – not things a gardener can directly supply, but things which we can only enable. Perhaps
in our relationship and families there are parallels here too. Some may see in this area the needs for spiritual development, others perhaps the quest for beauty or other ideals that we can strive for, and yet find it so hard to define. The key is in cutting
back the overhanging branches, the stifling weeds, to enable light and air to get in.
So this week I plan to spend some more time reflecting on my deepest personal commitment to my spouse (my sweet Mrs P), that commitment to her flourishing, and what I can learn from
the humble Sweet Pea. I’ll be thinking about what I do which helps bring sturdy structure that enables the plant to grow and thrive, how I’m providing healthy nourishment in all its forms, and how I can create the space for the sunlight and air to get to the
plant.
What are you doing for your Sweet Pea??
Celebrity, Human and Fun stuff
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Bizarre floating 'prenup house' can be split in two if a marriage doesn't work out - letting spouses simply sail away
OK – the frustrated architect in me couldn’t resist this
one from the Daily Mail!!
With divorce rates steadily increasing, some newlyweds are drawing up prenuptial agreements before tying the knot. But one firm has set out to help divorcees avoid a real estate battle
with a new design that easily splits the home in two - and lets them sail away from each other.
Called Prenuptial Housing, this floating house consists of two independent structures that separate if the couple should split up, resulting in two equal units that can float away
from each other.
The blueprints describe the structure as consisting of two independent prefabricated structures, which appear to be fused as one, that are easily split in two once the couple decides
to pull the plug. Lightweight carbon fibre elements and a semi-transparent wooden layer are used for the outside of building – this not only enhances the unity of the two pieces, but helps the home adapt to other environments if they should split. There are
also connecting mechanism that allows the pieces to detach and go their separate ways.
'The units are initially (pre)fabricated as independent carbon fibre units for which we designed a simple solid connecting system; detaching this system means unlocking the connection
and requires no unique tools,' Xander den Duijn with Studio OBA, the design firm behind Prenuptial Housing, told DailyMail.com in an email. 'The units should (dis)connect without much effort. Though this is part of the design that is still under development.'
The idea for the 'break up' home was conceived by Omar Kbiri, co-founder of Maak, who had the revelation while looking for a new home with his girlfriend. 'With the increasing number
of divorces each year, our concept is – regrettably – becoming more and more relevant,' said Kbiri, who is also a self-proclaimed PR and pop culture expert. 'I especially like the fact that we can stabilize the home front during an otherwise very hectic time.'
'With this concept you namely don't need to relocate after a break-up.'
Kbiri looked to the Dutch firm, Studio OBA, to help design the home that he hopes will capitalize on all the failed marriages and relationships.
The duo currently has their eyes set on countries in the EU that have the highest divorce rate, which include Portugal (68 percent), Belgium (71 percent) and Hungary (67 percent).
The blueprints of this floating home describe the home as consisting of two independent prefabricated structures, which appear to be fused as one, that are easily split in two once
the couple decides to pull the plug. And the key to the entire design are the connecting mechanisms that detach the pieces and let them float away in separate directions. 'When couples feel they are drifting apart, the house initiates a 'break up', by detaching
the two unites which then go solo on the water,' reads Studio OBA's website regarding Prenuptial Housing.
The design team pulled inspiration from the canals and floating structures in Amsterdam for their work and realized the easiest way to move away from a partner is to create a floating
house, reports Domain.com. 'The challenge of the project was to design a house that consists of two autonomous units that appear to be one,' said Vincent Ringoir who runs Studio OBA with fellow Technical University of Delft students Xander den Duijn and Gerben
van den Oever.
'Due to the way we designed it, the house responds to the flow of the relationship: when all is well, the house remains a unity. But when couples separate, the house – literally –
drifts apart as well. 'The biggest challenge was to search for a geometrical shape that is easy to connect, looks like one house when connected, but remains aesthetic when it becomes separated.'
Kbiri is currently in discussions with several investors regarding funding for the design. And Studio OBA hopes to build the prototype in the near future and open orders by early 2017.
'In the next steps of engineering/designing we aim to come up with a as short as possible building process,' den Duijn told DailyMail.com.
The costs of the house completely depends. The house as it is on the images is still a concept. This means that the way the house eventually is going to look depends on the wishes/requirements
of the client.'
Best wishes,
The 2-in-2-1 Team
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A Special Documentary Screening of
