Divorce in America
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This paper is a discussion of divorce in America. This complex and difficult issue has a continuing impact on almost every facet of modern life. More than half the marriages in the United States end in divorce, and this devastating statistic affects not only the ex-husbands and ex-wives, but also their children, families, friends, and society as a whole. Once a shameful and often objectionable way of ending a failed marriage, divorce has become common and widely accepted. Divorce no longer prevents a politician from running for office or a character on television from being embraced by an audience. Yet experts continue to debate its effects on children, and fathers still struggle to be recognized as equally capable custodians of their children. Conservatives argue against the "easy fix" that divorce represents, and families continue to suffer. This paper examines the possibilities for softening divorce's devastation and prevalence in American society. The fact that a marriage has failed is a difficult admission for partners to make. The bride and groom who began their commitment to each other, promising to love and cherish "'til death us do part," must now admit that, for whatever reasons, they are unable to sustain that commitment. Divorce is the most public of such admissions. Divorce in America is a growing phenomenon: Between 1966 and 1976 the divorce rate in the United States doubled. While demographers disagree about their projections of divorce rates in t
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ey has mastered" (DeVries 22).
Some have even gone so far as to suggest that divorce can be beneficial, allowing those who have been stifled by a marriage the room to grow as individuals. Constance R. Ahrons argues that divorce has been given an unnecessarily bad image in the popular media: "In film and television . . . we see the most sensational divorces - the ugly, dysfunctional, lethal ones that end in litigation . . . The media links divorce to virtually every social ill: drug abuse, family violence, even the Los Angeles riots" (13). Not everyone sees divorce in such extreme terms, but many have begun to accept its positive aspects.
Yet the widely held view of divorce as sometimes inevitable and socially acceptable has been meeting some resistance from a conservative minority that longs for a return to earlier values. Diane Medved expresses the clinician's argument: "The mere contemplation of divorce - the acceptance of it as an imminent option (rather than dedication to working on a wounded marriage) is debilitating" (3). Even supporters of divorce agree that the experience is devastating, but opponents contend that this trauma could be avoided if divorce were not considered to be an acceptable option.
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1607
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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