Increasing Marital Instability and Divorce

A study change that has occurred in the westerly family is an increase incidence in break. Whereas in the past, divorce was a relatively r are occurrence, in recent times it has suffer quite commonplace. This change is borne out clearly in count conformations. For example thirty geezerhood ago in Australia, besides one marriage in ten ended in divorce; nowadays the figure is more than one in three (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1996: p.45). A consequence of this change has been a substantial increase in the snatch of single kick upstairs families and the attendant problems that this brings (Kilmartin, 1997).\nAn important disregard for sociologists, and indeed for all of society, is wherefore these changes in marital patterns invite occurred. In this essay I will seek to critically examine a number of sociological explanations for the divorce phenomenon and also hand the social policy implications that all(prenominal) explanation carries with it. It will be argued that the trump out explanations are to be found within a broad socio-economic framework. One sign of explanation for rising divorce has focused on changes in laws relating to marriage. For example, Bilton, Bonnett and Jones (1987) argue that increased place of divorce do not necessarily indicate that families are now more unstable. It is possible, they claim, that in that respect has always been a ground level of marital instability. They suggest that changes in the law move over been significant, because they have provided unhappily married couples with access to a legal solution to preexistent marital problems (p.301). Bilton et al. therefore call for that changes in divorce rate can be best explained in terms of changes in the legal system. The problem with this sheath of explanation however, is that it does not consider why these laws have changed in the first place. It could be argued that reforms to family law, as well as the increased rate of divorce that has tended to(p) them, are the product of more fundamental changes in soc...