Causes and Effects of Divorce

Causes and Effects of Divorce Name Course number Instructor’s name Date Abstract Divorce is both a social and legal issue that has to do with ending or cancelling marital contracts. When married couples decide to divorce, they are often driven by more than one reason. There are different reasons depending on how they relate to the spouses unique experiences. Some of the most common reasons are those to do with incompatibility due to the feelings of missing love, loss of common interests and poor communication. Others include abuse and factors outside couples’ interpersonal relations. When divorce occurs, it has a particularly strong negative impact on children. They may fall prey to emotional instability leading them to a host of social problems such as drugs, alcohol and sexual activity. For parents, they may experience difficulty in finding other spouses, parenting and economic problems. Outline Introduction Subject and thesis Causes of divorce Affective causes Abusive causes External causes Effects of divorce Effects on children Effects on women Effects on men Conclusion Introduction Marriages where spouses manage their conflicting views amicably have rewarding effects on their economic status, psychological and physical health. They also contribute to positive outcomes on their children’s wellbeing (Clarke-Stewart & C, 2007). This is because the spouses are able to consolidate their earnings for the families’ projects and offer emotional support that is necessary for their children’s psychological and physical health. The children also benefit from the parent’s good relationship as it gives them a feeling of security in the home. When people decide to marry, they often have such high expectations. They expect to carry on the established commitment, trust and respect throughout the marriage. However, many of these marriages break down. There are several causes or reasons for divorce. This paper will group them into affective, abusive and external pressures. It will also discuss their effects grouped according to the effect on the children, women and men. It is important that people explore their attitudes towards the causes and effects of divorce before considering marrying. Affective reasons include problems that arise from infidelity, incompatibility or the feelings of being far apart from each other and poor communication between the spouses. Over time, some couples report that their spouses have different interests leading to a change in their levels of communication. Lack of communication then draws spouses further away from each other for various reasons. Some of the reasons include changes in desires and values and decrease in trust and love. Spouses report that the changes cause them to have totally different perspectives in life. It leaves them feeling unappreciated, without companionship, not understood and consequently drifts them apart. Infidelity is linked to affective and emotional realms of the marriage and it is one of the greatest motivations for divorce. Many spouses are unable to tolerate unfaithfulness seeing it as an unforgivable breach of the marriage contract (Vaughan, 1986) Abusive causes of divorce arise from people’s behaviors and their personality dispositions. Abuse may be physical, emotional or verbal and it is aggravated by alcohol and drug abuse. Physical abuse is one of the major causes of divorce and men are more likely to be aggressive in the marriage than the women. The couples’ personality dispositions and the communication styles determine how they respond to episodes of verbal and emotional abuse. Marital therapists have indicated that between forty and sixty per cent of marriages experience different forms of abuse at varying degrees (Wolcott & Hughes, 1999). Howeve...