Causes and Effects of Divorce

CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DIVORCE Social issues are controversial issues relate to people’s personal lives and interactions. Among thousands of social issues related to human’ lives such as abortion, suicide, illegal immigration, divorce- a major social issue is a family breakdown with many subjective and objective factors. Family, general speaking, is a nuclear one and represents the spirit of society. One of the aspects that affects to family is divorce. Divorce breaks not only the love should be contributed and expanded in the society but also the social structure. During the interview of ten college students, through their experiences with their parents and their friends’ parents, divorce is considered as a substantial problem because of many causes. Nevertheless, in their opinions, there are also two different ways in effect of divorce which are negative and positive effects to the society. Divorce is a decision of a couple who are less content to stay in loveless, unsatisfying marriages, and decide to break up a family. Jaime Santiago conceded that divorce is when two people no longer married. He says, ” It is the inverse of being married, and the separation of couple law of state”, so marriage and divorce are two opposite conceptual. Marriage brings two people get along each other as the vow “ I take you, for my lawful(husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part ”. Divorce breaks the vow when couples can’t seem to fulfill it. Divorce is very common, and the younger generation has greater social acceptance divorce than their parents' generation. Cheacheng Lim' opinion is about the differences in Tran 2 divorce between the younger generation and the older generation. His personal experience is a specific example of the divorce which exists in a multi-generation family. He says, “Nowadays, rate of divorce is much higher than the older generation. Personally, I know people like my aunt and my uncle. They married and stayed together for forty five years. But, my cousin, she had married for more than two or three time”. The point is his uncle’ family is a typical family of the older generation who considers marriage a sacred event. However, lasting marriages has most definitely become a thing of the past for the younger generation, and his cousin is one of them. Even though the younger generation inherits the traditional family values, in order to integrate with society, the values that the family used to respect are changed subtlely. One of the huge differences between the younger generation and the older generation affects the rates of divorce is that women completely change in roles. Beranea Azame says, “ The movement of women in the society change. Women have status in society, so they are more independent in deciding and choosing the relationship than they were before”, in the past, men have to earn whole money to afford the expense of family, whereas women only do housework. Hence women have no money leading to depend on their husbands’ money. Because of these situations, it is too difficult for most women to separate from their husbands. Nevertheless, these situations entirely change nowadays. The equality between men and women is very clear at the moment, thus women can work outside to earn money, while man share the household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing as well as caring for children. Since women can support themselves and live independently, they can decide to divorce if they feel unhappy with their husbands. Besides the changing role of women, for the younger generation, Joshua Yang believes Tran 3 that they are hurried on relationship, and divorce is a consequence of their behavior. He says, ”They don’t spend time to understand each other, and they are in rush to get married nowadays”, rushing in marriage is a phenomenon that the younger people decide to get married early. When they get married early, the young bride and groom will not have as good of a chance to discover who they are, what they want, what they’re good at and what they need. Like Mr. Yang, Oriesa Wiyono discusses, "After a few years, they have grown. At that time, they have more relationships and it might give them different points of view about their partners". A few years can bring many realizations… maybe one of them prefers one type of person after all, or there are more differences between them than previously thought. Then, that maybe part of what contributes to the increasing divorce rate. One such individual is Donavyn Olvera; he thinks divorce is affected by the society. Mr. Olvera generalizes, “It is a sign of our society moving to a more individualistic society”. Most basically, individualism is the belief that the individual come first. And, much of the happiness is visible in people who live in individualistic society. It is attributed to the freedom which allows them to freely choose the type of the relationships they want. People can choose divorce as a solution for their marriages if they want to have better quality of life. Like Luaxi Vang says, “I don’t think every couple should stay relationship if they don’t appreciate each other”. In this case, divorce has positive effect because it helps people, who are unhappy with their spouses, have a new beginning. Accordingly, they can work efficiently, which results from a fine mental condition. They not only have more free time to do many things, but also free from their spouses’ complains. In addition, divorces also get rid of the violence of quarrel between husband and wife. Hence everybody in family get better in physical Tran 4 and mental health. On the other hand, divorce has negative effects on the children who have to accept their parents’ divorces. Amporachene concedes that the emotional family transition affect childhood behavior. She says,” It is very sad for the children to see their families are falling apart. It affects to their behavior directly”. As a child, there are many situations that affect to a view, memory, opinion, or attitude. Many parents don’t realize how something like divorce could possibly affect their children as much as it does them. The feeling of ViakhamVang is a feeling of a child in a divorced family. She says, "My parent divorces, and I still feel lost until now". The children feel alone when their parents get divorce. The reason is after their parents get divorce, occasions of a merry-making such as birthdays, Christmas and Thanksgiving are never the same with their paternal and maternal extended families. They never have a chance to sing a Christmas song with all members in the family, and sitting on a table in a Thanksgiving Day is very difficult when the parents have their own family. Thoughtfully, JoshuaVang generalizes about the losses of the children in a divorce family. He says, “When parents get divorce, they never sit down and try to understand each other to figure out the best way to educate their children. Each of them has the own way, and it’s hard for their kids”. Parents divorce and they still have responsibilities to support and educate their children. However, when they split, it deals to have the different ways in teaching their children, and it makes the children confuse in which way should they follow- their fathers’ ways or their mothers’ ways. The confusions of children aren’t not only in which educational way they should follow but also in a decision of whom to live with, and it is one of the biggest problems that divorce Tran 5 imposes on children. Kalsi recounts his friend’ situation, “My friend' parent divorce, he can't pay attention to study because he has to decide who he should live with". It is’t easy for Mr. Kalisz to decide who should he lives with, especially, they are his parent who used to live with him in the same house. According to ten college students’ opinions, divorce is a social issue caused by the changing role of women, the young generation’ behavior, and the individualistic society. Divorce is considered as a common phenomenon in the society, and people use it to untie their relationship. However, it affects negatively on the children who have to accept and suffer it.