(CNN) — By the time Zulema Green turned 12, her mother had been divorced three times.
Her husband, Cory Green, was 3 when his father abandoned his family.
As the Georgia couple recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary at an upscale restaurant overlooking Atlanta, their milestone represented a far more personal challenge for each of them: They didn’t follow their parents’ footsteps.
“I figured I can get married,” says Zulema Green, now a 31-year-old attorney. “I can do it right.”
There are no precise statistics on the divorce rate in the U.S. because not all states report divorces. But among the states that did report, there were 3.4 divorces per 1,000 people in 2009, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Experts say the number of divorces has risen since the 1960s because of laws making it easier and divorce becoming more socially acceptable.
After all those divorces in years past, it’s no surprise that in modern-day couples at least one or both partners come from a family with divorced parents. But coming from a family that suffered marital discord can present challenges to the relationships of adult children of divorce, marriage experts say.
