The Pros And Cons Of Divorce

We’ve all seen Disney movies that end with a “happily ever after.” Getting married brings great rewards and benefits. Not to mention lifelong happiness with the person you love. There are numerous articles from marriage experts on what to do before, during and after a wedding to ensure success. Yet, we constantly hear how half of marriages end in divorce. Couples fifty or a hundred years ago and throughout history have had more successful marriages then we do in our time. You would think that with all the marriage experts, technology and advancements in our society that divorces shouldn’t occur or would at least be minimized. Yet, sites like Ashley Madison, which is a hook-up site for married or people in committed relationships to cheat

Yet, there are many sources both scholarly and none scholarly that are devoted to finding out what makes a marriage successful and what pitfalls to avoid that leads to divorce. In “Why do even satisfied newlyweds eventually go on to divorce?”, Lavner and Bradbury conducted a study of 136 childless ages 18 to 35 year old couples who were married within the first six months. Their study was aimed as identifying risk factors early in their marriage contrasting initial happy couples with couples who would eventually divorce. What was found was that couples who displayed more negative communication, emotion, observed communication, stress and personalities were more prone to divorce. Lavner and Bradbury also noticed that even some couples who were very successful early in the marriage were prone to divorce later on; they postulated that the strengths shown may have masked their interpersonal liabilities (Lavner & Bradbury, 2012). Some flaws that I initially saw, and that Lavner and Bradbury themselves mentioned, was using only heterosexual childless couples between 18 and 35 years and not distinguishing acute stress from chronic stress which severely limited their findings. Their study did not conduct an analysis and findings of couples between year 4 and 10 of their marriage, within the study, which left out

An analysis of state data 1960-2006”, Amato and Beattie conducted a bivariate analysis finding the correlation between the rate of unemployment and divorce. Amato and Beattie had a few theories and studied the psychosocial stress perspective wherein the demands of the environment put a strain on people’s resources and capacity to cope, essentially stress played a major part in the quality of the marriage. In researching this phenomenon Amato and Beattie looked into the Great Depression and subsequent periods of recession and how couple’s initial optimism in the husband’s employment prospects over time had turned into psychological distress and bled into marital discord. In particular wives fell into depression which decreased their emotional support, warmth and overall satisfaction for their husbands and thoughts about divorce increased. In the cost of divorce perspective theory, Amato and Beattie noticed couples were also reluctant to file for divorce fearing a lower household income due to the wife’s economic dependence on the husband and the husband’s dependence on the wife’s support at home and the lack of available funds for either couple to pay for a divorce lawyer and court cost. Couples were also reluctant to divorce as they saw the benefits of economic and social support as marriage provided in trying times. In the hybrid perspective theory, it combined elements of the psychosocial stress and cost