Marital stability among physicians.

Analysis of 57,514 initial complaints for divorce, separate maintenance, and annulment filed in California during the first six months of 1968 reveals that physicians are considerably less prone to marital failure than men of comparable age in the general population. Furthermore, when compared to professionals in general, doctors also appear less prone to marital collapse. For physicians, marriages break down in the greatest numbers and at the greatest rate between the ages of 35 and 44. Women doctors are at least 40% more prone to marital instability than men, and black physicians are nearly 70% more prone to divorce than their white colleagues. Of the individual specialists, orthopedists and psychiatrists possibly have the highest rates of marital demise.