Marriage and Divorce

Research Paper # 69087

This paper discusses the changes in the traditional family unit, and as a result, how divorce is more common today than it used to be.

3,800 words () | 3 sources | MLA | 2006 United States

Paper Summary:

The writer explains how ideas about marriage have drastically changed in this century and consequently the concept of divorce. The writer portrays the traditional family with the father a breadwinner, the mother a housewife and nurtured children and shows how society now questions the roles in families, with the result that divorces have become increasingly common. The writer shows how the stigma of divorce has been taken away and how therefore it has become much more accepted in society.

From the Paper:

"This report looks at the subject of marriage and divorce from several perspectives, and advances the argument that divorce has become a much more common occurrence in society than it used to be, due to the fact that divorce has gone from something that used to be considered aberrant and looked down upon by society, to something that has become considered normal and looked upon as normal by society, since it is so common in the present. In fact there is now a whole industry that is devoted to divorce, including lawyers, therapists, and self-help authors, and in a way, this industry sustains the normalization of divorce in society. People are more likely to get a divorce today than they were in the past because there is no longer a specific focus on the shame of divorce, and more of a focus on the so called positive aspects of it. "The normalization of divorce has brought us a long way from the stigma that accompanied divorce up until the 1960s. No longer is being divorced a deviant status, or an indication of pathology. Non-pathological therapeutic models of divorce now predominate, requiring management of sentiments and resources, rather than professional application of therapeutic practices to families in need to prevent divorce" (Varnis, 1997). Although the media image of the nuclear family still has its advocates, increasing divorce rates and changing patterns in the mass-media presentation of families as being effectively non-traditional (and the continued presence of their real-life counterparts) have made the modern family more open to gender-role malleability and extension to second-generation and blended-family
patterns, along with the acceptance of divorce as something normalized in society, as mentioned above. "While there may have been fewer divorces in the 1950s than today, there were undoubtedly many more unhappily married people" (Talbot, 1997). Couples today feel more free in both their gender roles and their attitudes towards a lifelong commitment that may not account for the fact that people change and may become irreconcilable. "