What Predicts Divorce: Discussion Essay

Introduction

Speaking of the family and the marriage, an extremely important sphere of the human life is considered, and this sphere lives through the profound alterations which occur today. The range of the treatments of proceedings is very wide. Frequently it is necessary to note, that the family, as a society and as a whole, is struck by the system crisis, which blew up the moral bases of human life. This is evinced by abnormal relations to the children and older people, the disturbance of the traditional related connections, an increase in the divorces, number of single mothers and so forth.

Main body

The topicality of the theme of work consists in the fact that although the relations between the people in the marriage are personal and especially individual, at the same time they have social values. In these relations lies the future of the state, which must be of special interest and serve as the object of concern from the side of the state and the society. It is possible to say with confidence that the society and the state are interested in the lessening the divorces and family- marriage relations to be normally developed and improved.

Divorce in any event testifies the destruction of family connections and their lack of strength and therefore objectively cannot be considered as a positive phenomenon. This essay is addressing the couple-family relationships and the issue of divorce in general as a phenomenon in terms of causes, dynamics and influences.

The family – is a unique institution of the cooperation of two people. This uniqueness consists in the fact that this tightest union of several people (husband and wife, then children) which connects their moral obligations. In this union the people attempt to conduct as much as possible time in joint interaction, to provide happiness and pleasure to each other in the process.

The destruction of the stability of the social status, the loss of confidence in the protection and stability of the family peace can negatively affect the adults and the children and sometimes they can lead to the asocial reactions. A comparatively small aid, shown at this moment to the family, which does not have the formal signs of social risk, can help it to preserve stability – otherwise family can pass into the category of unhappy families.

If outlining the crisis periods of family life, the usual stages could consist of the following:

• The first year of conjugal life is characterized by the conflicts of adaptation to each other, when two “I”s become one “We”. The evolution of feelings occurs, love in obsessive meanings disappears and the couples appear before each other in a natural manner. It is known that in the first year of the life of family the probability of divorce is great.
• The second crisis period is connected with the advent of children. The still weak system of “we” undergoes serious testing. However, what is the basis of conflicts during this period?
  • The possibilities for a professional growth of the couple are deteriorated.
  • Less possibilities for the realization of personal activities such as hobbies.
  • The fatigue of wife, related with taking care of the child, can lead to temporary reduction in sexual activity.
  • Possible collisions of opinions of the couple on raising the child problems. “Second-order change also occurs with the realignment of relationships with extended family as it opens to include the parenting and grandparenting roles.” (Arlene 2002)
• The third crisis period coincides with the average conjugal age, which is characterized by the conflicts of monotony. As a result the multiple repetitions of one and the same impressions by the couples set a feel of repletion of each other. This state could be called the hunger for the feelings, when “satiety” of the old impressions and “hunger” for the new starts. In addition if defining the conflict it could be said that it is a “a circumstance that can be explained by reliance on observed spouse behavior during problem solving as the primary source of data for understanding marital conflict and by a movement away from the idiographic approach characteristic of early behavioral interventions. (Fincham & Beach, 1999, p. 47)
• The fourth period of conflicts of couple relations can come after many years of joint life. Its appearance frequently coincides with the approximation of the period of involution, the appearance of the feeling of solitude, connected with the withdrawal of children that is amplified by the emotional dependence of wife, and her worries apropos of the possible tendency of the husband to be sexually satisfied outside of the marriage.

Significant influence on the probability of the occurrence of conjugal conflicts could also be caused by external factors: worsening in the material status of many families; excessive busyness of one of the partners (or both) at the work; the impossibility of normal employment of one of the partners; the absence of own residence and other.

The list of the factors of conflicts in the family would be incomplete, if we do not name the macro factors, i.e. the changes, proceeding in the contemporary society, mainly: an increase in the social alienation; orientation on the cult of consumption; the devaluation of the moral values, including the traditional standards of sexual behavior; a change in the traditional position of woman in the family (the opposite positions of this change are the complete economic independence of the woman and the tendency to be a housewife); the crisis state of the economy, finances, and social sphere of the state.

Many recommendations regarding the normalization of conjugal interrelations, warning the overgrowing questionable situations into the conflicts are developed. The majority of them could be analyzed as following:

• Respect yourself, and your other half.
• Remember that he/she is the closest person to you, the father/mother of your children.
• Try not to accumulate mistakes; offence and “sins”, but immediately react on them. This will exclude the accumulation of negative emotions
• Do not comment each other in the presence of others (children, guests and etc.)
• Do not exaggerate your own abilities and merits; do not consider yourself always in everything right. More greatly entrust and reduce the jealousy to the minimum.
• Be attentive, and know how to listen to and to hear your partner. Do not descend, worry about your physical attractiveness, and work at your weaknesses.
• Never generalize even apparent weaknesses of your partner, conduct conversation only about concrete behavior in the concrete situation.
• Act with enthusiasm and respect toward your partner’s hobbies and interests. In family life it is sometimes better not to know truth than establishing it at any cost. Try to find time in order to at least sometimes rest from each other. This will help to remove emotional- psychological repletion by conversations.

Divorce, i.e. the legally stated disintegration of marriage, is the antithesis of marriage, and could be described as its shady side. Sociological case study of divorce (sociology of divorce) – is to certain degree is the case study of marriage itself, and in essence its negative sides. So that this analysis would be successful, it is necessary to have a correct idea about social nature of that phenomenon, which should be analyzed.

Conflicts in the family can create the psychologically traumatic situation for the husbands, their children, and parents, as a result of which they acquire a number of negative properties of personality. In the conflicting family many the negative experience of contact is attached as well as, the loss the faith in the possibility of existence of friendly and tender interrelations between the people, and negative emotions are accumulated, in such a way that psycho-injuries appear. Psycho-injuries are more frequently manifested in the form the experiences, which in view of manifestation, duration or repetition strongly affect the personality. If analyzing thoroughly this radical method of solving conjugal conflicts, i.e. the divorce, it could be mentioned that it is preceded by a process, which consists of three stages:

1. The emotional divorce, which is expressed in the alienation, the indifference of husbands to each other, loss of confidence and love;
2. The physical divorce, which leads to the separation;
3. The juridical divorce, which requires the legal formulation of the curtailment of marriage.

Divorce brings deliverance from the hostility, fraud, lies and other things that makes the life intolerable. The divorce as a phenomenon has achieved wider spread in the society today “”Most people know that half of America’s new marriages are likely to end in divorce, a fact recently confirmed by the U.S. Census Bureau” (Mcmanus & Mcmanus, 2003) Certainly, it has negative consequences. They are different for the participants of the divorce, the children and the society. The most vulnerable to the divorce usually are women who remain with children. The negative consequences of divorce for the children are much more significant in comparison with the consequences for the husbands. The child could lose one parent, since in many instances the child stays with the mother.

Frequently, especially women, fear the need to be economically independent, because they feel dependency and they do not know, how they will manage their life. Men usually fear to completely lose contact with their children.

In many cases the effects of the divorce could be observed from many aspects although mainly negative, some positive factors could be found.

If addressing the positive effects of the divorce, it should be kept in mind that these effects are mainly established on the opinion of selecting the option that leads to less negative results. This principle is more perceptible in the case when the family has children; because it has been proved that “a conflict-ridden intact home is more detrimental to all family members than a stable home in which parents are divorced. Naturally, this is because the continued conflict drains the energy needed for a child’s development, causing difficulties in learning, socializing or other areas of growth.”(Peterson 2008)

In case the family has no children, this result in analogy can be paralleled without question, as it is better to peacefully separate and try to search for happiness elsewhere than to keep a family-like image and live in a delusion. Of course these statements works better when all other options and solutions have been tried and reached and this is usually true for people that are younger, educated, and were in temporary marriages.

If speaking about the negative effects of the divorce, it should be noted that the previously stated positive effects should be mentioned separately and not related to each other. Due to the variety of the negative effects of the divorce, only the main aspects should be mentioned.

The main and mostly the apparent effect of the divorce is the emotional aspect, as it is revealed that the problems in the family ends with a divorce and “negative feelings related to the failing marriage and the divorce have subsided to a point where they no longer determine behavior and where the divorcee seizes the change for personal growth.” (Guttmann, 1993, p. 55)

Conclusion

The financial factor is an additional argument on the negative sides of the divorce, and this case is particularly correct for women, as the study acknowledged “a 30 percent drop, as compared to a 10 percent to 15 percent increase for divorced men.” (Galston, 1996) Other aspects could include health and social effects of the divorce, however the main issue considering the divorce will stay the effect that it has on children.

Some of the effects the divorce on children could be considered the increased likelihood of being victims of abuse, bad relations with the parents, loss of desire to have children in the future, and behavioral problems. The majority of these problems follow the children in the future, as the researches are showing that “the effects of divorce continue into adulthood and affect the next generation of children as well.” (Fagan & Rector, 2000)

Works Cited

Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT (2002). Stages of the Family Life Cycle. Web.

(2000). Assessing Family Crisis. Web.

Fincham, F. D., & Beach, S. R. (1999). CONFLICT IN MARRIAGE: Implications for Working with Couples. 47.

Mcmanus, M., & Mcmanus, H. (2003). How to Create an America That Saves Marriages. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 31(3).

Witte, J. (2002). The Meanings of Marriage. First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 30+.

Fagan, P. F., & Rector, R. (2000). The Effects of Divorce on America. World and I, 15.

Galston, W. A. (1996). Divorce American Style. Public Interest 12+.

Guttmann, J. (1993). Divorce in Psychosocial Perspective: Theory and Research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Peterson, G. (2008). Is divorce always damaging to the kids? IVillage. Web.

Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce?: The Relationship between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hetherington, E. M. (2002). Marriage and Divorce American Style: A Destructive Marriage Is Not a Happy Family. The American Prospect, 13, 62+.

(2008). U.S. Divorce Statistics.: Divorce Magazine. Web.