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Science: Sociological Term

1 minute read
TIME

After surveying the nation’s mating habits, Sociologist Thomas P. Monahan reported last week to a Washington meeting of the American Sociological Society that the “remarriage group,” once composed almost entirely of widows and widowers, is now about 70% formed by divorced men and women. What’s more, noted Monahan, “our divorce rate is being compounded by a repetitiousness of divorce among a divorce-prone population group.” Sociologist Monahan’s solemn term-of-the-trade for such multiple marrying: “sequential polygamy.”

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