Divorce Hits Prime Time at the Huffington Post, With Nora Ephron at the Helm

Well, here's a sign of the times. The Huffington Post is launching a new section devoted to divorce. It was conceived by writer/journalist/filmmaker Nora Ephron, who will also serve as founding editor.

In some ways, one's tempted to ask: What took you so long? After all, as my colleague Bonnie Goldstein reported last week, marriage is at a historic low in the United States. And while U.S. divorce rates have declined slightly with respect to their all-time high in the early 1980s, they are still high by international standards. According to The National Marriage Project's State of Our Unions 2007 report, for the average couple marrying for the first time, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains between 40 and 50 percent.

But, of course, it's one thing to know that divorce is in the air and it's another to say that out loud, as my colleague David Gibson noted last week with respect to divorce within Christian communities. Which is to say that when a mainstream publication like The Huffington Post makes divorce a special focus -- on par with, say, "religion" and "politics" and "education" -- that's really saying something. (Full disclosure: I also write for the Huffington Post's Living section.)

It means that, much like gay marriage, we are witnessing a shift wherein divorce is now firmly a part of our cultural zeitgeist, rather than eternally outside it. And thank goodness for that. Because in addition to being a reality for many families, various aspects of divorce are well worth understanding better.

Like the legal side of it: e.g., whether "no-fault divorce" has any impact on the number of divorces or the rise of mediation as an alternative to litigation. Or the social/demographic aspects: e.g., how does divorce dovetail with race, gender, education and ethnicity? Does cohabitation lead to divorce? There's also more to uncover regarding some of the less-obvious predictors of divorce. And, of course, there's the eternal question of how divorce impacts children.

All of this research is already going on, of course. But by making divorce something we talk about within a mainstream cultural publication the way we routinely address issues like relationships and marriage, we will be normalizing those discussions and lessening the stigma. In this vein, the HuffPo Divorce section will even feature divorce "tips," according to HuffPo founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington.

And who better to spearhead this movement than Nora Ephron herself? I just finished "Heartburn," her thinly disguised 1983 memoir about the break-up of her marriage to Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein (which was subsequently made into a film starring Meryl Streep). It's not so much a novel as an extended rant against the man who cheated on Ephron when she was seven months pregnant. (And who can blame her?) But man, is Ephron funny. She has a terrific voice and I'm sure she'll bring some of that humor to the divorce pages at HuffPo. (Ephron's new book, "I Remember Nothing," also has a chapter on divorce.)

Because let's face it. Among the many things we all need to do with respect to the divorce epidemic ... is laugh.

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