Divorce alone does not cause civic disengagement outside religious activity

Evidence

Divorce per se is negatively related to involvement in religious organizations but appears to be unrelated (positively or negatively) to other forms of civic involvement, formal or informal. Compared to demographically matched never married people, divorced people don’t entertain friends less often (though they do give slightly fewer dinner parties), don’t volunteer less, don’t attend club meetings less often, don’t work on fewer community projects, and actually sign slightly more petitions, attend slightly more public meetings, and write to Congress slightly more often. Divorce itself does not seem to be seriously implicated in the general trend toward civic disengagement. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 962

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the commonsense intuition that family breakdown drives civic withdrawal — a useful corrective to the reader’s standing claim set. — connects to: Declining trust follows from civic withdrawal, not just causes it — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1215; Distrust of government may follow rather than cause civic disengagement — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1215

Broader Connections

• Distrust of government may follow rather than cause civic disengagement #corroborates (0.82) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1215
• Declining trust follows from civic withdrawal, not just causes it #complicates (0.75) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1215