Today’s society faces an ever-growing pool of social problems, ranging from drug abuse to unemployment to violent crimes, homelessness to inadequate health care, racism, poverty, a wide educational gap between economic poles, and a growing political stratification. It may seem trite to consider divorce as a social problem that has, in light of other concerns, a damaging impact on the social structure of the United States, especially in consideration of the acceptability of marital divorce and a relaxation of the stigma that has accompanied divorce for centuries, and which still is present in many foreign countries. That divorce is a contemporary social problem that the nation must address often seems to insult the citizenry, though the problems that are borne of marriage dissolution are often demanded to be rectified by government entities at the local, state, and national levels (Robinson, 2000).
However, as family is a cornerstone of individual personality and development, the ramifications of divorce have a reach much further than what is generally considered. It is not only the divorcing spouses which are impacted by divorce, nor only their children and immediate family. In one way or another, divorce puts stress on family and social circles in an ever-widening circle, placing demands on social structures that affect even those with no connection to the relationship. Educational resources, employment opportunities, and economical institutions all feel the effects of divorce, and those effects are passed out along nearly all social interactions (Tischler, 2007), affecting all of society as a whole, even as those affects are generally overlooked as a social problem stemming from divorce and are usually dismissed as a problem of an individual.
Statistically, the occurrence of divorces can be confusing. Because states no longer formally collect statistics reflecting marriages and divorces as they once have, the information is now gathered by outside sources, which sometimes do not include pertinent information. With the passage of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970’s, the actual reasons for divorce are usually difficult to discern. In fact, the reasons that directly contribute to divorce usually begin two to three years before the actual divorce and are rarely listed as the reason for the divorce. Before no-fault divorce laws were passed in all fifty states of the country, it was necessary to have a just cause for divorce, which was usually limited to infidelity or abuse, though reasons such as incarceration, inability to financially support a spouse, and mental illness were sometimes accepted as justifiable reasons for divorce. The passage of no-fault divorce laws was not meant to promote divorce, but to help regulate the instances of deception some spouses committed in order to gain a divorce and to free the court system of long and messy cases where agreements to terms was difficult to accomplish (O’Connell-Corcoran, 1997). As divorce became easier and less expensive to acquire, the divorce rate quickly skyrocketed. It seems that the divorce rate has lessened over the last decade, but this may also be a product of non-standard collection of data and the reluctance of divorcing spouses to participate in studies. Current statistics are non-committed to exact numbers and often are confusing because of different criteria used to arrive at any number, but the oft-quoted percentage is between forty and fifty percent of marriages will end in divorce. Age brackets, gender, economic standing, education, whether first marriage or beyond, and parental history are some of the criteria used in figuring out the divorce rate for the United States, each additional attribute making the raw numbers all the more baffling.
Unfortunately, forty to fifty percent is considered a low number (Hoover, 2009), and little is done to dissuade the population from seeking divorce, or to better regulate marriage laws so to help prevent the chances of divorce even before the risk becomes apparent. In fact, there seem to be more incentive towards divorce than to keep a marriage together, both monetarily and socially. The stigma of broken homes has been replaced, in the community and by the media, by the general attitude that divorce and single-parent households are instead the norm.
Divorce is not a new concept, nor is it a solely American issue. History shows that divorces have been granted nearly as long as history has been recorded, though it has never reached the proportion it currently sits at now. The Church of England split from the Catholic Church in 1534 because King Henry the VIII was unable to acquire a divorce from the Pope of the Catholic Church (Robinson, 2000). Nearly every culture of the world, throughout history, allows for some variation of divorce, though its popularity has only skyrocketed since the middle of the Twentieth Century, and the United States holds the highest divorce rate across the globe. That it is all the easier to obtain a divorce in current society may also contribute to a flippant attitude in entering into marriage, even though the marriage rate has decreased over the years and couples are generally marrying later in life, after education and career goals are pursued.
It is estimated that it costs society thirty thousand dollars a year for every divorce that is reached. This includes court costs, including time spent of the courts to finalize divorces, welfare programs and collection costs of child support and alimony (Eleoff, 2008), not to mention possible jailing costs for those that do not pay for child support or alimony. These are costs that are usually absorbed by taxpayers. There are virtually no public programs funded that work towards preventing divorces, through counseling or pre-marriage programs. For those couples that wish to work towards keeping their marriage together, those costs are left to them to cover.
Aside from monetary costs to society, the impact of divorce affects our nation at different levels. Obviously, the individuals that divorce are directly affected, but so are any children which are borne of any relationship, as they are children and later into their adult lives. Social programs have been established for the sole purpose to deal directly with the aftermath concerns of broken homes. Economical welfare is threatened by the impact of divorce; the number of families receiving government assistance or living below the poverty line is staggering (Borden, 2010). It can even be surmised that personal security in the consideration of marriage has been broken down because of the number of divorces and the chance that any new union runs such a high risk of ending within the first eight years of marriage.
Often, the topic that comes under greatest consideration in relation to marital divorce is how a couple’s children are affected by the divorce. Generally, any change in a child’s usual habits becomes considered an affect of the divorce, whether it be a drop in school grades, or promiscuity, or drug and alcohol use, or just depressive moodiness (Addotta, 2006). For many years, any straying from contemporary acceptable behavior that had the slightest correlation to a broken marriage was considered a result of divorce, of children’s response to the splitting up of their family. To be sure, a divorce certainly does change the life of a child and throws his or her emotions into turmoil, but it is more often than not the behavior of the parents and how they, as adults, handle the situation that most strongly negatively affects children’s reactions. Too often, the parents, dealing with a frustrating situation as it is, neglect to emotionally support their children through the difficult time. The time following a divorce is often harder for the children, especially those that grow up exclusively with a single parent, which is where many of the worrisome troubles for children are generally found. In the majority of instances where children’s reactions are destructive in some way, it’s found that the parents’ divorce was drawn-out and complicated, and that one or both parents were not as supportive of the child’s needs as necessary.
Children, when cared for through the divorce process, generally come to accept that their parents are not splitting up to hurt them and that the divorce’s intention is to bring an end to unhappiness. However, children do not come from a divorced family without its effects making an imprint on their lives. Perhaps even more important than the immediate effects of divorce on children is the long-lasting repercussions that it leaves with children as they grow into adulthood (Eleoff, 2008). It’s unfortunate that having grown up with divorced parents increases the odds that a couple now will turn to divorce, but current statistical information shows that these couples are at a much higher risk for their marriage ending than those couples which did not live with their parents’ divorce as children. One reason why some sociologists speculate that children of divorced parents face such a higher risk is that divorce is seen as a viable option to marriage problems, for both those children that endured a complicated divorce and those whose parents’ divorce run smoothly with compassion and understanding. Children, even before divorce became such a social issue, have always looked to their parents firstly as models for future relationships. Whether it is the good traits of a family’s relationship or the troubling mistakes parents make, these all leave their mark on the children and are carried forth into their adult years.
The impact broken marriages have on society may seem to be a less concern than many of the other factions that weaken society’s structure, especially as society takes a more liberal attitude towards family affairs. Still, it is understood that there is a sort of correlation between those that live through divorce and many of the problems that contemporary society faces (Schaefer, 2006). An end of divorce would certainly not bring about an end to crime, or to alcoholism, or to unemployment or war, but it may be a better support system for society to look towards a way towards suggesting a path other than divorce, instead of making it all the easier to end a marriage. It’s been suggested that to lower the current divorce rate means presenting a new approach to marriage, that pre-marital counseling may be a helpful tool in readying individuals for entrance into a serious, healthy relationship. As marriage is a lawfully-recognized union and divorce is a legal dissolution of that union, the country’s courts should exert more effort in programs which promote healing at-risk marriages, instead of making it easier and easier for troubled spouses to divorce. This is the idea set by many individuals who see marriage as more than just a foundation for the family unit, and therefore society, but as a holy union that is more than a legal bond, and there may be merit in such idealism. Sociologists theorize that marriages which hold together produce healthier, happier individuals, even those which weather bad times, and these marriages tend to promote a healthier attitude in those individuals involved in such families, individuals which pursue cooperative and compromise to find solutions, rather than bring things to an end. The products of divorce become fault lines of the community, of society, and more energy is expended towards damage control, rather than investing in services that would counsel against dissolution, despite the costs to society that broken families brings. As citizens demand less intrusion by government into personal issues, courts back off from involvement in divorce cases, in some cases turning the whole affair over to mediators who work with the divorcing spouses towards an easier split, and this has definitely contributed to the higher number of divorces in the United States. The flip side of this lessened involvement is that, after divorces, citizens and communities demand that the government pay for and resolve the issues that develop from these divorces, such as a rising poverty rate, child care, and social services. The responsibility of consequences becomes the problem of society to deal with, even though it is the unwillingness of the responsible individuals to handle those issues that they have brought into being. This trend of demanding that the government fix the problems and mistakes created by individuals is certainly not a new thing, but has increased over the last few decades as previous standards and morals are tweaked to changing ideologies that lend more favor to a society demanding more and more from the government and undertaking less accountability for their own actions, all the while claiming personal rights for that which was once earned (Robinson, 2000). Obviously, this opinion does not describe society as a whole, but has been a growing response to many of the issues the government is now charged with resolving. Those that have not lived with the direct impact of divorce in their lives argue that it is doubtful its repercussions can undermine social structure as much as some social scientists say, but there are too many instances of social troubles which hold divorce in the background for such impact to be overlooked.
In years before the divorce laws were changes, sociologists theorize that the troubled families that stayed together and worked through the troubling issues were more apt to produce children who grew into adults which did not turn to divorce in their own marriages, granting that the initial issues were not of abuse of any kind. The children of these marriages were also more apt to choose marriage partners with greater care, as opposed to the flippancy which occurred once divorces were of a greater ease to obtain. Once an easier way out of marriage was available, more marriages ended for no other reason than the two spouses no longer wished to be together. Knowing that such dissolution was within easy reach allows for individuals to turn away from problems, from dealing with issues towards a resolution (O’Connell-Corcoran, 1997). It isn’t only this weakening of marital structure that suffers from a refusal to work towards solutions, rather than let society handle the consequences, but it may be said that numerous social issues stem from this weakening of the family unit. The family is the basic building block of the community, of society. While the traditional nuclear family may be rare in today’s society, it should not be as difficult to maintain a healthy family structure, yet this hope is hindered by the attitude that troubles should be abandoned, rather than resolved. Sociologists continue to note that numerous social issues hold this same refusal to face problems and this may be another aspect of divorce that is overlooked in its impact (Schaefer, 2006), as children grow up with the decisions their parents make shaping the decisions they make themselves. This consistent circle becomes more of a spiral, of a downward spiral, as individuals incorporate this attitude into more aspects of life. Society becomes overwhelmed with the consequences of troubles, with the aftermath of issues, and energies which would have better effect concentrated at the root of society’s issues are expended on the results of those issues.
For whatever social structure marriage and the family unit is set to become in contemporary America, it is not left to the country’s government to provide a crutch for the individuals who decide to shuffle aside the problems they set into place. As social issues grow in their impact and become problems on a national scale, the consideration that the social troubles created by divorce lead towards much more damaging effects needs to be realized and understood that waiting till those effects occur before dealing with them has been greatly unsuccessful. While divorce is most likely never going to be abolished, and forcing people who are unhappy together to stay together can lead to disastrous results, to not take action towards supporting healthier marriages can only lead to society merely providing damage control after the fact, a situation that will not approve until society, and its citizens, work towards building stronger relationships instead of simply making it easier to cast aside troubles when one is unhappy.
Resources
Addotta, K. (2006). Divorce! Kip Addotta Encyclopedia of People, Products, Services, Health & Entertainment. Retrieved October 2, 2010 from http://www.kipaddotta.com/legal/divorce.html
Borden, L. (2010). Divorce statistics. Divorceinfo. Retrieved October 02, 2010 from http://www.divorceinfo.com/statistics.htm
Eleoff, S. (2008). Divorce effects on children: An Exploration of the ramifications of divorce on children and adolescents. The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. Retrieved October 2, 2010 from http://www.childadvocate.net/divorce_effects_on_children.htm
Hoover, A. (2009). Divorce rates. Divorce. Retrieved October 2, 2010 from http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Divorce_Rates
O’Connell-Corcoran, K. (1997). Psychological and emotional aspects of divorce. Retrieved October 2, 2010 from http://www.mediate.com/articles/psych.cfm
Robinson, B.A. (2000). Divorce and remarriage: U.S. divorce rates for various faith groups, age groups, & geographic areas. Retrieved October 2, 2010 from http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
Schaefer, R.T. (2006). Sociology: a brief introduction, 6th ed. McGraw-Hill. NY.
Tischler, H.L. (2007). Introduction to Sociology, 9th ed. Thompson Wadsworth; Thompson Learning, Inc. Belmont, CA.
Sarcasm & Witt, Inc. 