Sometimes my Facebook page blows up with explosive discussion because technology has allowed us to think out loud with an audience. Perhaps it was news of a friend on my timeline who’s about to remarry for the fifth time that made me wonder about how it seems as if white women have a lot less problems getting married after a divorce, even when the women have like, 12 kids. I also find that the men pursuing these unions are often undaunted about becoming stepfathers, or even adopting the children from previous relationships. I have one Facebook friend, a pretty blue-eyed blond, who I met when me and The Hubster married, because she was also on her honeymoon. We bonded over the fact that we got married the same day and promised to give each other a call on every anniversary. My friend got divorced about five years in and two kids later, then was single for a couple years, and now is married again to a really nice guy. All of this happening within a decade.

Black women, on the other hand, don’t even come close to having these kinds of options because the marriage pool is much more shallow and generally speaking, a woman with children knocks down her “value.”

Here’s the facts:

Remarriage statistics complied from the National Center for Health Statistics (2002) show:

54 percent of divorced women remarry within 5 years

75 percent of divorced women remarry within 10 years

Black women are the least likely to remarry

White women are the most likely to remarry

SOURCE: A 2002 study by the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the CDC in the USA) collected information on remarriage among other information on women.

I honestly don’t know the answers to these questions I’m doling out, but I do have some theories. Besides the obvious reality that white women have the biggest pool of eligible and marriageable men because of their sheer numbers and how whiteness still leads the pack as far as privilege, you can’t ignore that there might be something more to it. I asked a white, male friend of mine about this phenomenon and he gave me a frank answer. Basically, women who have been divorced with kids are still appealing because that first marriage proved that at least one guy in the world thought that woman was “worthy” of marriage. It sort of activates that primal, competitive instinct in men, who often commoditise a woman’s desirability. The data seem to indicate this as well. “Women whose first birth was at least 7 months after first marriage are more likely to remarry after divorce than women whose first birth occurred before or just after marriage,” according to Remarriage.com, who sourced from the CDC report.

The report also indicated that people from lower socio-economic levels marry less often and remarry less often across racial lines. Also, people in the South seem to marry, divorce, remarry, rinse and repeat like crazy.

Economics aside, is this an indication that white people value marriage the most?