Lawyer Reveals The Number One Reason For Divorce Among His Clients & It's Not Infidelity — 'Women. Are. Tired.'
Working moms' have simply had enough, and marriage and couples' therapists are noticing it too.
TikTok We've all heard the statistics—roughly half of all marriages end in divorce, though the situation has improved somewhat over the years. According to CDC data, the divorce rate has actually fallen since 2000 as millennials have delayed marriage (and have learned from their Boomer parents' mistakes). Still, the institution of marriage isn't exactly doing so great.
Most people assume—and much of the data shows—that issues like infidelity and poor communication are the number reason for divorce in the US. But in recent years, it seems like a different marital issue might be causing far more disaster.
A divorce lawyer took to TikTok to reveal the number one reason for divorce he sees among his clients.
Data from the National Institutes of Health points to issues like lack of commitment, infidelity, and constant arguing as the most common reasons for divorce. But divorce lawyer Dennis Vetrano, known on TikTok as @drvlaw, says he's seeing an entirely different situation most commonly bringing couples into his office.
The divorce lawyer says working moms' exhaustion with the unequal division of household and parental labor is ruining marriages.
"Want to know the major theme that I'm seeing in the divorce industry as a divorce lawyer, as I do consults these days?" Vetrano asks in his video. He then goes on to describe a scenario all too many women will find readily relatable. "I am seeing working moms doing it all."
Vetrano went on to describe the scenarios he most often sees with his clients. "She's got the kids, she's got the groceries, she's got the laundry, she's got the meals, she's got the work—and by the way, she's making all the money and she's paying for the house and doing everything else."
He says that he all too often sees situations in which husbands respond to their wives' workloads by saying, "I'm going to go play this, I'm going to go hang out with my friends," before ending his video by emphatically stating, "and women. are. tired."
Women have always had an unequal share of the responsibilities when it comes to parenting and household work, but recent studies have shown it's only gotten worse since the pandemic. A 2022 study led by food company Kuli Kuli in conjunction with the University of California and Northeastern University found that the widespread "work from home" schemes since the pandemic have totally blurred the lines between work and home, with most working mothers finding it near impossible to separate the two anymore.
And the pandemic has worsened the trend of moms becoming the "default parent"—the parent who makes all of the decisions and manages all the details, big and small, of raising children. All of this has led to a massive problem with parental burnout—one that is suffered woefully unequally between women and men.
An Ohio State University study in 2022 found that while 68% of working moms reported massive "parental burnout," just 42% of working dads did.
Many marriage therapists agree with the divorce lawyer's take on the number one reason for divorce, though the data differs.
Despite Vetrano's observations, according to the National Institutes of Health, considered the foremost authority on the topic, inequality in marriages doesn't even rank among the top reasons for divorce. Granted, its most recent data is from 2013—and a lot has changed since then, including what the global pandemic hath wrought.
But reading between the lines of the NIH's reasons makes Vetrano's claims make sense. What is an unequal marriage if not a "lack of commitment"? And if arguing is among the top reasons for divorce, it stands to reason that a lot of those arguments are about precisely what Vetrano is calling out—working moms who have simply had it with their husbands allowing them to be the default parent.
A marriage therapist on TikTok agreed, listing the problem as among the biggest reasons for divorce she sees in her female clients.
Women on TikTok flooded Vetrano's comments to confirm from their own experience that his number one reason for divorce was spot-on. "I will never forget the day I said 'If I’m doing it all by myself, I might as well be by myself.'" Another user called out the destructive impact of many men's "weaponized incompetence," while a fellow legal professional described how their female clients "come in tired and broke down and about mid-way you can see the weight start to lift."
But one woman summed up the problem in terms that are impossible to forget. She wrote that after years of an unequal marital workload and being the "default parent," "[women] even filed the divorce, [found] the attorney, [and] created the child custody schedule." It just never ends, it seems, even when the marriage has.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers social media and human interest topics.