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Essay on Divorce in America

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Divorce rates in the United States have increased dramatically in the past 25 years. Over 40 percent of the marriages among young Americans will end in divorce. There is a lot of stress on all the people involved. The man has to deal with, usually, not seeing his children, being alone, and the responsibility that is accompanied with much of the legal process. The wife has to go through, maybe, entering the work force for the first time. Children are often viewed as a back burner issue but more often than none they are the center piece of discussion. The children may begin feeling inadequate around their friends and even in personal esteem. Feeling like it is their fault they might get depressed or perhaps even rebellious. …show more content…

Nine out of ten children will reside with their mothers. Between 9 and 11million school-age children in the
United States live in one-parent families. About one-half of all divorces occur within the first seven years of marriage with the first two to three years being an especially vulnerable time period for divorce.(pp.47-63) The actual rate of divorce may only represent a small amount of the problem. It is unknown how many marriages end in non legal separations or how many married people stay together in an empty, essentially dissolved, relationship for the children's sake.

Of course, you do not have to be married to experience a separation from a close relationship. ?If we add to the official divorce rate the number of cohabitation couples who break up, those who terminate their engagements to marry, break-up, steady dating partner, or otherwise bow out of a relationship, several million couples end intimate relationships each year.2?(pp.27-28,30)

So, why do people separate? Unmarried couples give us a number of reasons for separation. In one study, researchers followed over 200 couples for a three year period. ?During this period of time, more that one-half of them ended the relationship. Seventy-eight percent of the men and women listed boredom as the major reason for the separation.(Kolata: pp, 42) Apparently their romantic,

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