Sociology Content and Analisis

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Carolina Arias Ortega       

 Content and Analysis

In total I have done 3 interviews, 6 people have participated in these, 2 couples and 2 single persons. The ages of these participants are varied.

(Names have been changed)

The first person to interview was my Aunt Petunia aged 47. She is widowed and only been married once, she has never been divorced.
Secondly I interviewed Sally 46 and James 56; they have been married for 18 years.
Dom 16 from my sociology also class took part in my project.

And lastly Monika 21 and Samuel 24 who are a cohabiting couple.

My first key finding was that marriage and divorce nowadays is not seen as a such a big issue as it was once, when asking my sister Monika and her partner Samuel, a young couple whether they intended on marrying they said that they probably wouldn’t but that if they did it wouldn’t be for themselves, but for their parents who did see it as important.

Monika said “I don’t see marriage as a big deal, it’s only a bit of paper, I don’t need it, I already know Sam loves me and he knows I love him, what’s the point? Too much work!!”

Her partner Sam seemed to share this opinion with her, “If Monika sees getting married as a big deal I wouldn’t mind, but if she doesn’t then that’s cool too”.

They both seemed to be in love with each other and completely comfortable about talking about their future plans with me, they also seemed very honest and didn’t seem to just tell me what they thought I wanted to hear.

Dom my youngest participant said that he was too young to even be thinking about marriage but that if he was to end up in a serious relationship he wouldn’t mind whether he married the girl or not. “I don’t really see why bother, it wouldn’t change anything but not getting married is better really because if you get along badly you don’t have to divorce after”.

This suggests that people do see divorce as a threat and that people may be choosing not to marry so as to avoid divorce.

Therefore my first key finding likes to the study of Robert Chester (1985).

Robert Chester said that the nuclear family wasn’t going to stop existing, families would still have 2 adults together, it would just change its form, instead of having married couples step families or cohabiting couples living together. This has been the case with my younger participants.

Sally and James revealed to me during our interview that although they weren’t in love that they would never consider divorce as they have their children and religion to think about, they also need each other economically.

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“Why divorce if we’re fine as we are, it’s a big effort and me and the children wouldn’t be able to survive without James’s help, and he wouldn’t be able to survive without mine either, also our religion doesn’t allow us to divorce as it’s seen as wrong, I completely agree with this.”

When talking to Petunia I found that she was more religious and traditional than I had thought, I discovered that when her husband had been alive they had had marital problems and he had committed adultery, yet she never left him or asked for a divorce.

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