ADJUSTMENTS TO DIVORCE

According to Fagan and Rector (2000), an average of one million marriages end in divorce each year in America. As to the consequences, of divorce Fagan and Rector note that:

Mounting evidence in social science journals demonstrates that the devastating physical, emotional, and financial effects that divorce is having on children will last well into adulthood and affect future generations (p.1).

Among the effects of divorce, Fagan and Rector (2000) note that children of parents who divorce are more likely to be victims of abuse and to have health, behavioral, and emotional problems. They are more likely to engage in crime and substance abuse, and to do less well than other children in school. As for the adults, women who are heads of single parent families tend to be far poorer than they were than they were married and both parents will often go through a long and difficult period of adjustment in the wake of divorce (Fisher & Alberti, 1999).

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the adjustments that adults go through as a result of divorce, both how children of divorce fair when adults and the adjustment period that parents who divorce often experience. The context of the discussion is the acceptability of divorce using civil/social standards and the acceptability of divorce using biblical standards. Differences are noted and the literature on adjustment to divorce i

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divorce could be allowed on the grounds of adultery. In addition, a marriage may be dissolved when one or (or both) of the parties is not baptized as a Christian. This was a practice of the early Church and is mentioned by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:12-15. It is known as the "Pauline Privilege". It is preferred that Christians marry Christians rather than persons who do not share their faith, especially keeping in mind the advantage for children of the marriage. Given the foregoing, divorce can be said to be acceptable from both a civil/social perspective and from a biblical perspective. However, the biblical grounds for divorce are far fewer than the social grounds. As noted earlier, Jackson (1999) states that the biblical injunction against divorce is to safeguard both children and adults from the serious consequences that can often follow the dissolution of a marriage. These consequences and the adjustments they entail are discussed in the next section of this paper. However, before examining the adjustments, one additional point must be made concerning the biblical and societal views of when divorce is acceptable. Crouch (2004) reports that the societal view of divorce is shifting in modern society with people of diver
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2526
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)