Friday, April 24, 2009
Divorce in Your Own Family
We have all been reading a chapter on ending marriage so I figured I would get a discussion going about divorce. The chapter gives many social, economical, and personal reasons and statistics about why and who gets divorced. I am torn on the topic, on one hand I do not believe that divorce should be so acceptable in our society, and easy to obtain without just cause. But on the complete other hand I believe in the right to choose to get out of a unhappy marriage no matter what the reasoning may be. I only contradict myself in the subject of divorce. I do not want to get divorced, when or if I get married. However, if I find myself in an abusive or unhappy marriage I want the ability to legally leave. My own parents got divorced when I was young. They both remarried divorced people with children. And they both got divorced to my step-parents again. I have seen first hand what divorce does to a family, my own family has been split so many times there are few relationships that survived. I just want to hear your opinion and maybe share your stories about divorce. What do you think the cause of divorce? Is is OK to live in a society so eager to get a divorce or should we go back to more "traditional" ways of thinking about marriage? Just some ideas to start with....
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Polygamy's the way to go
ReplyDeleteMy father has been married and divorced three times, and my mom has been divorced once, and then remarried later. Coming from a family that has a history of unsuccessful marriages it has made me very realistic on the subject of marriage. Even though we have learned that cohabitating couples have a higher rate of divorce compared to couples who don’t cohabitate prior to marriage, I would never marry anyone without living with them for a least a couple of years. Another reason I think that some people are more likely to get a divorced is because they rush into marriage, and get caught up in the idea of being married without thinking about how it can change everything, OR think that things will change if they get married.
ReplyDeleteIs OK to live in a society so eager to get a divorce or should we go back to more "traditional" ways of thinking about marriage? I think the problem is that people get married knowing that they can always get divorced so there is less thought put into the idea of marriage.
I think that because divorce is so acceptable in our culture today marriage is not seen as a sacred bond between man and woman like it used to be viewed. People go into marriage knowing that it is easy to just walk away therefore people are getting married too fast these days. They are not thinking about what their relationships are really built on. I know a girl who is 22 and she keeps on looking for a husband. She just wants a wedding so bad and is not even looking at the people she dates for their character. Society makes marriage look so magical with all these wedding shows that are on t.v. all the time that it makes people run to the alter too fast. I think that people are marrying each other these days knowing next to nothing about each other and then when they really get to know each other in the marriage and decide they are not right for each other they have to go get a divorce. Also because cohabitation has become such a norm it has also led to divorce because people live together as a couple and do not have established roles for years then all of the sudden when you are legally bound the roles set in and people can't handle the change. Just a few thoughts...
ReplyDeleteDivorce is a sensitive topic for alot of people. I believe that the divorce laws should stay the same even though I do not agree with people divorcing when issues can be corrected with cooporation and listening.
ReplyDeleteI believe that if divorce is restricted there will be more women that will stay in abusive relationships. I think that having to prove abuse or another personal reason in court before being approved for divorce will cause many people to stay in a relationship for fear of further abuse or emarrasment while waiting for a verdict. This frustration or fear will lead people to use other means to end or deal with the stress inflicted by the poor marriage. Murder, abusing else, or abandoning the family may be the only way one might use to handle the stress.
Marriage is and should be considered sacred. It is unfortunate that so many people get divorced, but if made more difficult I believe that more people will stay in relationships that are abusive emotionaly or physicaly.
I think that in our world today, marriage is not held to be as sacred, or even as a life long commitment to someone, which is pretty sad in reality. Many people go into marriages as they would a regular relationship as "boyfriend/girlfriend"in my opinion. They do not take as much time to get to know each other before hand and I don't think people take marriages as seriously as they did in the past, mainly because divorces are so easy to obtain. Although many people get married for the wrong reasons, or do not try to work their issues out as much as they should, I think that the divorce laws should stay the same. If there was not a "no fault divorce" there could be many more cases of people staying in abusive relationships or extremely unhappy relationships. Over all I think that people should try to work out all of their problems and give it their absolute best shot in their marriage, but if in the end it just is not going to work and the love is not there anymore they should be able to get out of it for their own personal reasons.
ReplyDeleteI think there are many reasons for divorce like we have discussed in class. Some may include abuse and cheating. Some reasons are unhappiness, miserable,and possibly losing that connection with the person. I do not think it is right that our society has taken divorce into the next level and is divorcing for reasons that could be fixed. I think a couple should try to work things out open mindedly and there are so many variables to consider. I think the children are one big impact on divorce. It is hard on the children to see parents divorcing because it used to be considered normal to have a mom and dad married and living together. Now days society has excepted that it is normal for divorce and parents living in separate homes of the children.
ReplyDeleteNo one in my immediate family has got a divorce. The only firsthand experience for me was my cousin, she cheated on her husband and after having a son that was not her husband they had got a divorce then. I think that the causes of divorce are that they are unhappy or they were in an abusive relationship. I do think divorce is a good thing depending upon the situation. I do believe many people may rush into marriage at such a young age and in the end the only thing that they can resort to is divorce.
ReplyDeleteMy parents divorced (they were not married but when a child is involved there are legal implications) when I was real young after they had cohabitated and from what I understand and with my own knowledge of my own parents the reason was because they were just too different of people. But I really don't think that cohabitation was to blame I think if they would have just rushed into a marriage it would have ended in the same outcome. But to answer your question I think now days the main reason for divorce is because of financial reasons. I think the financial stresses of a relationship is a big contributer to break ups or divorce and that goes agaisnt the norm, but I think that if people are not used to sharing everything of theirs and are put in a relationship they might get frusterated with it. I not sure if it is morally right to live in this kind of society but there are so many cases where accessibility of divorce is needed that we almost have to be this way.
ReplyDeletemy parents almost got a divorce they separted and my mom moved out into an apartment but they got back together i think this really influenced me because before i thought there was no way that they could fix there relationship because of how bad it had gotten they were fighting constantly i hated it at the time i could say that i wanted them to divorce but with some marriage counceling and alot of work they got through it. i dont know how! but there together to day they still fight sometimes but they dont seem so bad anymore they learned how to deal with each other so i think if they could work it out then allot more people can can work through there problems than actually do because i had once belived they had crossed the point of no return but i was wrong so now i think i have more faith that a marriage can work if you work at it.
ReplyDeleteI think that most people have been taken in by the view of romantic love that we have been sold by books, movies, the media and religion. Originally marriage was more of a contract between families or a man and a woman. In many ways it still functions that way. Unfortunately, we seem to always relate only to the idea of life long love and bliss and forget that when marriage was considered to be a life long commitment that the average life span was maybe 40 years. Now the life span is much longer so people who stay married for life can end up married for 40-60 years. People change a lot over that many years and can become so different that the marriage no longer works. Also, if someone is in an unhappy and abusive marriage they deserve the chance to get out of it and try to lead a happier life. I feel that when a person makes the commitment to be married it should be genuine and hopefully out of love and hopefully for life, but that is the ideal and most marriages do not end up so well. I feel we need to keep the divorce laws as they are, but we need to do more to educate people about the real commitments involved in marriage and raising children and help them to see beyond all the ideas of a big expensive wedding and romantic, blissful love forever.
ReplyDeleteIn America we value freedom over anything else. I do not think that the divorce laws as a whole will shift to more traditional views anytime soon as this would limit peoples freedom(not to mention im sure many feminists would have a bone to pick on any laws that are put into place to hinder divorce). As someone with absolutely no experience of divorce in his own family i can only go by what happened with my friends who lived thru divorces. In most cases it was the best thing to do to solve issues that most likely were present before the marriage in the first place. Insuring proper education about birth control would reduce divorces by a substantial margin.
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