Divorce Essay

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Kirsty Downey 13D        Divorce Essay

Divorce is a major cause of changing family patterns and greater family diversity. For example most re-marriages involve a divorce and a divorce creates both lone-parent families and one-person households.

Since the 1960’s, there has been a greater increase in the number of divorces in the United Kingdom. The number of divorces doubled between 1961 and 1969, and doubled again by 1972. The upward trend continued and peaking in 1993 at 180,000.

Since then numbers have fallen somewhat, but still stood at 157,00 in 2001 and six times higher than in 1961. This rate means that about 40% of all marriages will end in divorce.

About 7 out of every 10 petitions for divorce now come from women. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in the past. For example in 1946 only 37% of petitions came from women which are barely half today’s figure. The commonest reason for a woman to be granted a divorce is the unreasonable behaviour of her husband.

Some couples are more likely than others to divorce. It is said that couples whose marriages are at greatest risk include those who marry young, have a child before they marry or cohabit before marriage and those where one or both partners have been married before.

There are five main sociological explanations on why there is a higher increase on divorce since world war two.

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Number one is, Changes in law.  Divorce was very difficult to obtain in 19th century Britain, especially for women. Gradually, changes in the law have made divorce easier. There have been three kinds of change in the law

  • Equalising the grounds (the legal reasons) for divorce between the sexes.
  • Widening the grounds for divorce
  • Making divorce cheaper

When the grounds were equalised for men and women in 1923 this was followed by a sharp rise in the number of divorce petitions from women. Similarly, the widening of the grounds in 1971 to ‘irretrievable breakdown’ made divorce easier to ...

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