Research in the Field of Family Studies of Marriages and Divorces

Decades ago, researchers in the field of family studies predicted that forty to fifty percent of marriages in the United States would result in divorce. Alas, as of this era in time, their results proved true. The most common causes for divorce are economic hardships, lack of communication, infidelity, abuse, premarital pregnancy, and substance addiction.

Those who tolerate divorce argue that it is the wisest decision in particular circumstances such as domestic abuse and arranged marriages. These people would further assert that not everyone is destined for or capable of maneuvering pressures and responsibilities that a healthy marriage requires. Those who oppose divorce, such as certain religious institutions, argue that it is a threat to the sanctity of marriage and, with respect to the doctrines of the Bible, is considered a sin. Further consequences of the increasing divorce rate include detrimental psychological effects on adolescents of separated parents and the economic downturn of not only the spouses involved, but also the taxpayers of society. Nonetheless, the staggering U.S. divorce rate can be reduced through a three-pronged approach: educating prospective spouses, reparation of a healthy marriage through counseling and self-improvement, and maintaining financial stability. While divorce cannot be completely eradicated, these methods are highly efficient in reducing the risk of divorce.

This report will also address to what extent these methods work and, if not applicable to an individual, a more desirable alternative to divorce, a tactic recognized as the Good Divorce. Divorce incurs consequences so great that Westerners have become desensitized to the severity of the issue, leading society to normalize it. Authors, playwrights, artists, and song writers are in part to blame for glamorizing the ease of leaving a significant other, rather than staying in the relationship to mend the loose seams. Every so often, however, an intellect or artist successfully manages to illustrate the emotional and financial suffering that is contracted when a couple decides to separate or file for divorce. One instance is American author, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451. In the novel, the main protagonist Guy Montag is confronted by both internal and external conflicts, one of which is how he chooses to cope with his loveless marriage to his wife, Mildred (Millie). Bradbury sets up the story with the fact that Guy and Mildred have been married for years, but not long after, readers discover that neither remember how or when they first met. This comes to bother Guy, who begins to see his dispassionate society for what it actually is, especially when Mildred seems to care less about these curiosities he holds.

Mildred is an example of a problematic spouse: she suffers from mental illnesses, including but not limited to depression. As a result of her chronic depression, she is known to often overdose on sleeping pills, a routine that is deemed normal and shared by many other citizens of their town. Not only that, but she suffers from an enslavement to her television screens, which cover the surface of an entire wall in the media room of their home. Guy is appalled by her addiction, yet she shared with him her desire to install television sets on all four walls of the room (Bradbury 50). The issue that Bradbury attempts to exemplify here is not the poor condition of her mental health or her media fixation, but the lack of empathy Mildred has regarding her poor decisions. Like many American marriages that result in demise, at least one spouse refuse to address the interpersonal issues that incite a troubling marriage. For instance, one spouse may be at fault for being irresponsible with their fair share of chores or paying bills. Due to the arrogant nature of humans, that spouse will tend to deny his faults. Therefore, the problem is not so much the inequality in a marriage, but the spouse’s refusal to acknowledge said inequality. There are many causes as to why marriages often fail, from psychological distress to economic hardships to dissatisfaction.

The 1950’s were known as the Golden Age for marriages; after decades of economic instability and poverty, the general American population desired fulfillment and pursued the prospects of marriage (Stephanie Coontz 7). Then, it was a legalized standard that men were paid more than women were, given the same work, and men were appointed by court as the head of the family. Therefore, final decisions regarding marriage and familial affairs were exclusively extended to the husband. Women conformed to these marriage laws, claiming their traditional homemaker responsibilities while their husbands claimed the breadwinner title by working white-collar occupations. Alas, the normalcy of divorce was rampant even seventy years ago, as these requirements became societal norms. When one or more spouse were incompetent or insufficient in their efforts to stabilize the marriage, feelings of resentment developed. Stephanie Coontz, author and professor in the field family studies, rationalizes this trend, when marriage did not meet their heightened expectations, their discontent grew proportionately. The more people hope to achieve personal fulfillment within marriage, the more critical they became of ’empty’ or unsatisfying relationships. (Coontz 7) By and by, as enormous nineteenth century financial, social, and statistic changes cleared the United States, separate was progressively reprimanded for the subsequent social issue.

The quantity of separations did in truth increment through the span of the century, as did the discernment that the family was in a condition of emergency. Adding to the anxiety, ladies’ rights supporters, for example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton started to advance separation as a device for ladies’ liberation from awful relational unions (DuBois, 1998). A composed antidivorce development emerged by around 1870 (Grossberg, 1985), responding both to the ascent in separation and to the crusade for ladies’ rights (see Coltrane and Adams, 2003; likewise Faludi, 1991). The pioneers of the development, sorted out as the National League for the Protection of the Family,1 comprised to a great extent of White male ministry, legal advisors, judges, scholastics, and government officials. One of their essential undertakings included spurring an “instructive” battle to connect separate with family breakdown and social issue (Dike, 1888), a task that we may today see as likened to an antidivorce advertising effort. Thus, separation and marriage came to be viewed as oppositional procedures, and separation was compared for the most part with social issue. Imagining divorce as an ethical fiendishness to be battled in America’s homes and on the administrative front, the antidivorce crusaders concentrated on fixing state limitations on separation and advancing national consistency in grounds and direction.

As a rule, the nineteenth century separate from change development is viewed as a disappointment by students of history, who refer to the development’s long haul failure to lessen separate (O’Neill, 1967). By and by, various states moved to constrain access to separate by lessening the quantity of accessible grounds, and states with omnibus conditions canceled them and reestablished conclusive reason for separation (Grossberg, 1985). In spite of the fact that the nineteenth century antidivorce development was to some degree fruitful at empowering consistency crosswise over states, it was less effective in advancing consistency in separation direction at a national dimension, albeit uniform separation laws were presented in Congress on a few events (Grossberg; Riley, 1991). The present investigation proposes that, despite the fact that that battle was “lost” in the early piece of the twentieth century, an undifferentiated from battle has reemerged as of late at the national dimension as the government, in coalition with marriage advancement advocates, has moved to make “solid marriage” the standard for change action the country over. Be that as it may, there’s an extra layer of complexity to the breaking down of the American family.

Justifiably, guardians who separate when their youngsters are youthful once in a while stay chaste; they find new accomplices and may even have extra kids in these associations. We are just start to get a handle on the impacts these different “complex” or “mixed” family setups have on children. The Census Bureau’s report featured an amazing assortment of ways that life ends up harder when one has youngsters with different accomplices. A parent may owe child bolster installments to somebody outside the family in which he’s raising his new family, or might rely upon such installments from an untrustworthy previous sweetheart. Moms with youngsters by numerous men get less help from family despite the fact that they by definition have greater more distant families; it gives the idea that the circumstance makes an “equivocalness” in regards to the “limit” of the family unit. (It’s not difficult to envision, say, a grandma being less anxious to watch her grandkid when that involves likewise watching a second child from her child’s ex’s new sweetheart.) Men who begin a second family invest significantly less energy with their first round of children. Divorce incurs consequences so great that Westerners have become desensitized to the severity of the issue, leading society to normalize it. Authors, playwrights, artists, and song writers are in part to blame for glamorizing the ease of leaving a significant other, rather than staying in the relationship to mend the loose seams.

Every so often, however, an intellect or artist successfully manages to illustrate the emotional and financial suffering that is contracted when a couple decides to separate or file for divorce. The issue that Lilins attempts to exemplify here is not the poor condition of her mental health or her media fixation, but the lack of empathy Mildred has regarding her poor decisions. Like many American marriages that result in demise, at least one spouse refuse to address the interpersonal issues that incite a troubling marriage. For instance, one spouse may be at fault for being irresponsible with their fair share of chores or paying bills. Due to the arrogant nature of humans, that spouse will tend to deny his faults. Therefore, the problem is not so much the inequality in a marriage, but the spouse’s refusal to acknowledge said inequality. There are many causes as to why marriages often fail, from psychological distress to economic hardships to dissatisfaction. After decades of economic instability and poverty, the general American population desired fulfillment and pursued the prospects of marriages. Then, it was a legalized standard that men were paid more than women were, given the same work, and men were appointed by court as the head of the family. Therefore, final decisions regarding marriage and familial affairs were exclusively extended to the husband.

Women conformed to these marriage laws, claiming their traditional homemaker responsibilities while their husbands claimed the breadwinner title by working white-collar occupations. Alas, the normalcy of divorce was rampant even seventy years ago, as these requirements became societal norms. When one or more spouse were incompetent or insufficient in their efforts to stabilize the marriage, feelings of resentment developed. Stephanie Coontz, author and professor in the field family studies, rationalizes this trend, when marriage did not meet their heightened expectations, their discontent grew proportionately. The more people hope to achieve personal fulfillment within marriage, the more critical they became of ’empty’ or unsatisfying relationships. Those who tolerate divorce argue that it is the wisest decision in particular circumstances such as domestic abuse and arranged marriages. These people would further assert that not everyone is destined for or capable of maneuvering pressures and responsibilities that a healthy marriage requires.

Those who oppose divorce, such as certain religious institutions, argue that it is a threat to the sanctity of marriage and, with respect to the doctrines of the Bible, is considered a sin. Further consequences of the increasing divorce rate include detrimental psychological effects on adolescents of separated parents and the economic downturn of not only the spouses involved, but also the taxpayers of society. Nonetheless, the staggering U.S. divorce rate can be reduced through a three-pronged approach: educating prospective spouses, reparation of a healthy marriage through counseling and self-improvement, and maintaining financial stability. While divorce cannot be completely eradicated, these methods are highly efficient in reducing the risk of divorce.