Part 2: Do You Know WHY You Are Getting Divorced?

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Having children is not a goal anymore in some marriages. Thus, there is less and less reason for a husband and a wife to stay at home for quality time and bonding. Sadly, they usually grow apart as years go by.

Smaller Families, Longer Lifespan

Improvements in medicine and health made it possible for us to live longer. At the turn of the 19^th century, an average American lived for 48 years. Beginning in the 21^st century, he is expected to live until he is 78 years old. The additional years in the life expectancy allowed more time to pursue multiple careers and multiple relationships. This means more time to pursue other things than just tending the kids and the family.

During their predecessors’ time, life is already winding down by the time mothers have stopped raising all the kids. Today, women still have a lifetime ahead of them after the kids have grown due to lesser number of children (roughly two children per American woman) to raise and the added years to their life.

Improvements in medicine also gave way to the widespread practice of birth control. This resulted in changes in fertility behavior and preferences such as women now being able to achieve their desired family size in order to have more time for other things than child-rearing. Some men and women even shun the idea of having children to be responsible for, even if they are married. Thus, lesser number or the absence of kids in a marriage, coupled with longer lifespan, means more time to spend on careers and other endeavors. The husband and the wife are getting more focused on pursuits outside the home and the family has to compete for time and attention.

Divorce Spurred By Changing Priorities

The average marrying age moved up also from early 20’s to mid and late 20’s. This indicates the changing priorities of Americans today. They delay marriage to establish careers and experience the freedom of single life. Most of the time, they get married only if and when it is compatible with how their careers are doing, instead of the other way around.

Therefore, even before they start a family, they have long established themselves in their chosen careers already. Thus, there is primacy of career over anything else in their mind. Sometimes, they even find it easier to give up on their marriage than their careers.

All these factors are inter-related and together, they stand to render long-term marriage obsolete, unless married men and women are flexible enough to adapt.

Marriage is both a private contract and a public institution. The public validation needed for something so private means that it has profound effects on society at large. In fact, marriage is indeed an institutional means of assuring societal stability and survival.

These modern tendencies that threaten marriage should be carefully studied and we should all be open to their inevitability. If we do so, we will give marriage a chance to survive.

But Americans are not about to give up on marriage. More than 90% of them get married at some time during their lives. In fact, there were 2.3 million marriages occurring in 1992. Never mind that half of that figure ended up in divorce, it still attests to the fact that the institution of marriage is far from obsolete. People still believe in its viability and still want to give it a try. The chances of survival of a marriage rest on how the couple and the entire family learn to adapt and be flexible to accommodate the changes discussed in the foregoing.