In the United States, more than half of the marriages will end up in divorce. In several other developed countries, this divorce statistics are almost similar. It looks like our society believes in disposable marriages.
Regardless of the conventional marriage vows most couple make, where most of them include the “until death do us part” statement, marriage is considered in many parts of our society as a casual relationship.
Particularly in the public eye where movie stars, entertainers and professional athletes are recording exceptionally high divorce rates.
In addition, policemen in the U.S. have an extremely high divorce percentage, one of the highest of all profession. The causes are numerous: it’s a dangerous profession, the opposite sex is attracted like magnet by the uniform, the gun, the badge and the authority, and a policeman becomes cynical when dealing with the negative aspect of human nature.
Around fifty percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce and in Russia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Denmark these rates are almost as high.
What happened to the promises made during the matrimonial ceremony? Why are couple divorcing rather than solving their differences?
The lack of meaning people put in marriage is clearly indicated by the number of couples who decide not to get married and instead cohabitate in “civil unions” but still choose to have children. It is not rare for a woman in underprivileged classes to have different children from different fathers.
The collapse of the family as the heart of domestic life is one of the cause for this deficiency of commitment to marriage. It is also characterized as the outcome of this deficiency.
Moving away from religion is also a reason why many people do not take their marriage vows sincerely. Their lack of faith in a divine being turn their vows “before God and man” into meaningless words.
Luckily, couples with children have a forty percent less divorce rate than couples with no children. Nevertheless even if this number is lower, what kind of message should these children from these broken marriages get? That it is alright to break up and divorce? What kind of commitment can be expected by children of divorced parents?
More than one-third of children come from broken families and the average age most first divorce occurs is around thirty years old, age when most couples have children. As a consequence, may children grow up in single parent homes throughout their influential years, period when they require both parents’ influences.
The percentage of divorce and the obvious missing value for marriage vows represent a bad image of our modern society. If marriage is no longer considered as a sacred act between two people making a lifetime commitment, then why marry at all?
We could go back to a primal society structure similar to chimpanzees one where casual male-female relationship is standard and promiscuity is widespread. Females in heat copulate with any male showing desire for them, generally any adult male.
Then the resulting paternity is so in doubt that all the males are acting like all the newborns are their progeny but unlike their human cousins, the male chimpanzees show at least some responsibility.
Here is one statistic that has some impact: couples showing strong religious values and practices respect more their marriage vows and divorce is much less frequent. Respecting their faith gives more meaning to the promise they made in front of their god.
Trying to save a marriage is more difficult than treating it as a casual relationship and only half the couples are prepared to work at their marriage.
