Ex NFL player Ed Hartwell opened up recently about the reason he filed for divorce from his wife, child star Keisha Knight-Pulliam. During an exclusive with PageSix, he said that given their extremely short courtship of about a few months, he thought waiting longer to introduce a baby to the marriage was best.
“She wanted a baby really fast, and what I was trying to explain to her was that — from my beliefs, from seeing other successful people — that when you first get married, especially since we didn’t have a long courtship, that we should actually focus on each other and not just have a baby,” he said via Skype call with the gossip site.
The studies support him. Recent research states that couples that have courtships of 3 or more years are 39% less likely to get a divorce compared to those who date for 1 to 2 years; they are just 20% less likely to get a divorce. Couples that were together less than 6 months before marrying have the highest divorce rate.
“Couples who date for 3 years or more have better chances of staying together and a more stable marriage,” APlus summarized. “The findings mimic those of a 2006 study which found that couples who have dated less than 6 months before marriage had the highest divorce rate,”
Hartwell was also on point about spacing out babies. The average married couple in the United States wait three years into their marriage before having a baby.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control, state that American women are an average age of 26 when they get married and 29 when they have their first child — which varies from person to person. And this certainly doesn’t factor in older women.
At age 37, we can imagine, Knight-Pulliam didn’t want to take her chances on fertility as the older a woman gets the harder it is for her to have a baby without medical intervention and she was perhaps, anxious.
But Hartwell knows about the risk from his own personal history. He was married before after a reported short courtship and he is now divorced from former Real Housewives of Atlanta star Lisa Wu. Recently, Wu ripped into Knight-Pulliam for allegedly (according to Wu) commenting on Wu’s marriage to Hartwell on the show Hollywood Exes. She explained her concern was more for her 9-year old son with Hartwell.
“I’ve allowed people to assume as they wish and it’s been hurtful. But It’s no 1’s Biz & there is children involved. Not only her unborn child, but my 9 year old who can read very well,” she captioned a now deleted Instagram post. Wu now stars on VH1’s Hollywood Divas.
Knight-Pulliam seems to have a large network of supporting family and friends, and may be okay. She was chilling pool side and showed a photo of her baby bump to her fans on Instagram lately. This could be captioned: #Unbothered
The joy of sitting by the pool and not having to suck your stomach in!!! ??? #MeAndMyLittleLady
A photo posted by keshiaknightpulliam (@keshiaknightpulliam) on