Patterns

• Factors affecting divorce rates

  • Age
  • Social class and occupation
  • Ethnicity
  • Religion
  • Family experience of divorce
  • Social and status differences between partners
• Divorce rates


  Different in several categories
• Age


  • The younger you marry, the higher chance of divorce
• Pregnancy


  Might have reasons for the high rate of divorce
• Social class and occupation

  • M/C have lower divorce rates than the W/C+
  • Unemployed have the highest rate of divorce
  • Lower income groups are more likely to have high divorce rates
• Ethnicity


  • Divorce rates are usually lower among ethnic minority groups, especially those who have a strong cultural tradition centred on religion
  • Divorce is a less available option for ethnic minority groups due to isolation and rejection by family
• Religion


  • Generally, parents who have committed religious beliefs have lower divorce rates than those who don't
  • Catholicism forbids divorce and a divorcee cannot remarry in the Catholic Church
• Family experience of divorce

  • You're more likely to divorce if your parents/close family members have divorced
  • Having divorced parents may lead to the child having less opposing views to divorce
• Social and status differences between partners


  • Divorce rates are usually higher when the couple are from different social backgrounds (class/ethnicity/religion/age)
  • Differences between partners can add further problems, but one can gain strength from adversity
• Explanations for the increase in divorce

  • Changes in law
  • Declining stigma and changing attitudes
  • Rising expectations of marriage
  • Women's increased financial independence
  • Feminist explanations
  • Modernisation and individualisation
• Changes in law


  1. Equalising the grounds for divorce between the sexes

  2. Widening the grounds for divorce

  3. Making divorce cheaper
• When the grounds were equalised for men and women (1923)


  There was a rise in the number of divorce petitions from women
• Widening of the grounds (1971)

  Made divorce easier to get, divorce rate doubled almost overnight
• Other solutions to an unhappy marriage


  • Desertion - when a partner leaves but the couple could still be married
  • Legal separation - a court separates the financial and legal affairs of the couple but they stay married and aren't free to remarry
  • “Empty shell” marriages - couples are still living together but are married in name only
• Declining stigma and changing attitudes

  • Churches usually condemn divorce
  • As stigma declines and divorce becomes more socially acceptable, couples are more willing to go to divorce as a way to solve their marital problems
• Secularisation


  Decline in the influence of religion in society, people are less likely to be influenced by religious teachings when making decisions about personal matters like whether to file for divorce or not
• Rising expectations of marriage

  • Functionalist sociologists - higher expectations placed on marriage today are a major cause of rising divorce rates
  • Higher expectations make people less likely to tolerate an unhappy marriage
• Ideology of romantic love

  • Marriage should be based solely on love, and there is a 'right person' for everyone
  • If love is lost, there's no reason to stay married, divorce and find one's true partner
• In the past, people had little choice who they married (family was a unit of production), marriages were often contracted largely for economic reasons/out of duty to one's family
• People went into marriage with lower expectations and were unlikely to be dissatisfied by absence of romance
• Women's increased financial independence

  • Improvement in their economic position has made them less financially dependent on their husband, freer to end an unsatisfactory marriage
  • Women are more likely to be in paid work, generally earn less than men but equal pay and anti-discrimination laws have helped to narrow the pay gap
  • Education helps them achieve better paid jobs, so they are more likely to be able to support themselves
• Feminist explanations


  • Women carry a dual burden: do paid work and also domestic labour, this is a source of conflict between husbands and wives, leading to a higher divorce rate than in the past
  • Marriage is still patriarchal and men benefit from their wives' triple shift of paid work, domestic work and emotion work
  • Hochschild - women feel valued at work but not at home, men's continuing resistance to sharing housework frustrates them and makes the marriage less stable
• Modernisation and individualisation


  • In modern society, traditional norms like staying with one same partner all your life lose their hold over individuals
  • If it becomes free to pursue their own self-interest, relationships become more fragile because people are less willing to stay with a partner who doesn't give them personal fulfilment
  • The 'pure relationship' exists to solely satisfy each partner's needs, this leads to higher divorce rates
• The New Right sees divorce as undesirable as it undermines marriage and the traditional nuclear family (important to social stability)
• Feminists see divorce as liberating, as women are breaking free from the oppression of the patriarchal nuclear family
• Functionalist perspective


  Behaviour is largely a response to shared norms and values
• Change in the rate of marital breakdown


  Reflection of changing norms and values in general
• Value of marriage


  Increasingly valued as marriage is seen as a source of personal satisfaction
• People's expectations of marriage


  • Expect and demand more from marriage
  • More likely to end a relationship that would have been acceptable in the past
• Conflict between spouses


  • Adaptation of the family to the requirements of the economic system places a strain on the marital relationship
  • Relative isolation of the nuclear family from the wider kinship network
• Modernity, freedom and choice

  Increased likelihood of conflict between spouses as people live in an enterprise and free-market culture of individualism
• Postmodernism and individualization


  High divorce rates mean individuals have the freedom to end a relationship that doesn't meet their needs anymore
• Functionalist perspective on high divorce rates


  • Threat to the family as a social institution
  • Result of people's higher expectations of marriage
• Interactionist perspective


  Wants to understand what divorce means to the individual, as the meaning is different for each person
• Personal impact perspective


  • Accepts that divorce can cause problems such as financial difficulties and lack of contact between children and non-resident parents
  • Some argue divorce has become 'normalised' and family life has adapted to it without falling apart
• Changing roles and social position of women

  • 75% of divorce petitions are made by women
  • Dissatisfaction among women with their marital situation + husbands
  • Increase in women's employment has given greater opportunities for women to be economically + financially independent
• Women's average earnings are still less than of men


  Women are in low paid part time work, which isn't good for financial independence
• Women don't see marriage as the only fulfillment in life


  They may look to their career/social life as a combination
• Divorce Regulation


  1. Law changes - liberalized divorce made it cheaper + easier to get for large no. of people

  2. 1984 - reduce the time limit for divorce for a minimum of 3 years of marriage to just 1 year

  3. 1996 (The Family Law Bill) - partners had to say that their marriage had broken down instead of showing one / two partners were to blame

  4. 2022 (Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act) - Application for divorce can be done digitally + The time between the beginning of the proceedings and completion has a time frame of 20 weeks (min)
• Changing expectations of marriage and family

  • High divorce rates are evident, increased expectations + higher standards of marriage
  • People are less likely to put up with unhappy 'empty shell' marriages - divorce is more common
  • Modern marriages are weak + are only held together by emotional ties, if these fail there is no reason for the couple to stay together