Stand on the front lines of the recession, as therapist Erica Karlinsky has, and the view for married couples isn't rosy.

Karlinsky, a Lake Mary, Fla., psychologist, now spends a lot of her time counseling men who've lost their jobs -- or wives who are dealing with an unemployed husband who won't get off the sofa or won't stop crying.

The stress of job losses is impacting families from all backgrounds, but perhaps none are more affected than blue-collar families, who have been hit hard by the recession, according to a new report from the National Marriage Project.

And experts worry that when the recession ends and the economy improves, the divorce rate will spike again -- with many of the divorces concentrated among the working class. That may further widen what sociologists call the nation's "divorce divide" -- a growing gap between the divorce rates of working-class Americans and college-educated Americans.

"Working-class couples are already vulnerable," said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. "The recession is probably shaping up to be one more factor driving working-class marriages down."

Men have borne the brunt of this recession, accounting for 75 percent of the job losses, according to the report, titled, "The State of Our Unions, Marriage in America 2009." And blue-collar men have been hit hard. In September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 4.9 percent of college-educated women and 5 percent of college-educated men were unemployed, while 8.6 percent of women with a high-school diploma and 11.1 percent of men with a high-school diploma had lost their jobs.

For those men particularly, the recession has been devastating.

Labels: divorce, economics, gender, Marriage, men

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