The statisticians tell us that about half of all marriages end in divorce. As do most people who work in family law, though, my wife Kathy and I often wonder why there are SO MANY divorces, and why divorce is so much more frequent now than it was only a few decades ago. Here are my, distinctly unscientific, theories on the subject.
1. The family is no longer the primary economic unit of society. Back in the days of my grandparents and grandparents, most Americans lived on farms or worked in small, family-owned businesses. Mom, dad, and the kids all worked together tending fields, herding cattle, or stocking the shelves. My great-grandfather, Q.K. Barber, was a cattleman on the prairie between Baytown and Liberty, Texas, and he worked all day on his own land within a several hundred yards of his wife and daughters, and within a few miles of similar spreads run by his brothers and sisters. The family was together, or at least close to one another, all day, almost every day. Shared work, shared hardship, shared triumphs, shared experiences bound husband, wife, and children together into family units that were much tighter than are most families today, in which husband and wife go off to their own jobs, kids are off doing their own thing, and folks are lucky to see each other over dinner a few nights a week.
2. The family is a far less important social unit of society. In our rural, agrarian past, the husband and wife typically did not have circles of friends with whom they would go out drinking or for card night or game night or girl's night out or whatever. Husband and wife were each other's best friends and were each other's primary social outlet. Not only were there fewer opportunities to stray, this relationship was just one more set of ties, one more layer of glue, that held husband and wife together. These two factors, husband and wife working apart from one another and then doing much of their playing apart from one another, cannot help but lessen the number and the force of the bonds that hold them together. I am convinced that one of the things that has held my marriage to Kathy together through some of the tough times has been that we work together and are each other main source of friendship and companionship. We spend almost all of our time together. Sure, sometimes we rub each other the wrong way, but mostly this fact means that we have so many bonds, so many shared experiences, so much that we do together, that it would take a nuclear device to drive us apart.
3. Popular culture does not foster realistic expectations of love and marriage. The love stories that we see on movies and on TV, that we read about in books, and--as a result--that we imagine for ourselves these days, are full of the mythos and magic of love and nearly devoid of sweat and tears that it takes to make a marriage work. The song says that "Love Will Keep Us Together," when, in reality, love will only bring us together; it takes commitment, courtesy, caring, and communication to make it stick. People think that once love has brought them together, some sort of ethereal magic will ward off all of the evil forces that might serve to drive them apart. To the contrary, the world is full of forces that strive to drive the couple apart and that, if not actively fought against by the couple almost every day, will certainly succeed, if not in causing them to divorce, at least will serve to make them unhappy.
4. Popular culture does not praise and reinforce the traits of character and conduct that make marriages strong. There was a time when adults in our culture were portrayed as mature grown ups, committed to their families, and bearing adult responsibilities. Whatever their dramatic deficiencies, television programs like Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch showed Ward and June and Mike and Carol holding down professional positions, making sure that the house was clean and meals prepared, providing structure and discipline for children, paying the bills, and generally getting the job done. Adults in family sitcoms now are generally immature, incompetent, disorganized, histrionic, and in most cases indistinguishable in their level of gravitas from the children in the show. Indeed, much of the comedy in many of these programs is derived from the unflattering contrast between the maturity and sensibility of the children relative to the childishness of the adults. This is not to say that TV writers can or should reset the clock to 1969, but perhaps we would all be better off of television and movies that portray families would contain more examples of adults who have their acts together and who act their age. Many young people, particularly young men, seem to aspire to a protracted--if not eternal--adolescence (only with more money) in which they hang out with their friends, drive cool cars and buy neat stuff (the guys in these movies and shows tend to live in pads that have basketball hoops, pinball machines, sports posters, and other teenage trappings writ larger and more expensively), even if they are married and have kids. I have heard the term "family man" spoken on these shows often with derision, rather than respect. The prototypical sitcom husband and father of 2011 is not Ward Cleaver, but Homer Simpson.
5. Not only does our culture not reinforce marriage, there is much in our society that seems actively dedicated to destroying it. The media portray adultery, if not with approval, then at least in many cases without strong condemnation. Many parts of our society wink at affairs (a trait once seen only in the very rich). The gals in Sex and the City (I am told) bounced into and out of the beds of the married and single alike. In fact, there is even a well-financed, widely advertised dating service the explicit purpose of which is to help people tie up for extramarital sex. No, I won't post the link or give their name here, but their motto is "Life is short. Have an affair." The company web site boasts offers an "affair guarantee" and touts the company as "the most recognized name in infidility . . . . We are the most recognized and reputable extramarital affair company. . . . We are the most successful website for finding cheating partners." The website says the company has over nine million clients. Makes me want to barf. No, my sexual conduct has not always been the most praiseworthy (although, in all of my three marriages, I never cheated on a spouse), but the idea of a company actually being in the business of facilitating a kind of conduct that is not only illegal in many states, but that is also enormously destructive emotionally, socially, and economically just plain blows my mind. The difference between that company and a dealer in illegal drugs is one only of degree.
In America of the Twenty-first Century, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that marriage is under attack on many fronts. If you want your marriage to endure, you must defend it. Our book, How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers, puts in your hands some very simple, robust, and powerful weapons for doing so.
Overall, we need to recognize that, these days, the seed of marriage does not fall on the fertile soil that was there to receive it a generation or two ago. That does not mean, however, that the seed is destined to die. Rather, it means that, if the seed is to grow, WE must nurture and water and fertilize it ourselves. Now, more than ever, each marriage stands on its own, to flourish or perish based on the individual efforts of its members. If you are married, you must remember that society will not sustain your marriage, popular culture will not sustain your marriage, government will not sustain your marriage. If marriage in America is going to be saved, it will be saved one couple at a time. As with so many other things in our society, we need to build from the bottom up. The strength of the building comes from the foundation in the ground, not the satellite antenna on the roof. Saving your marriage is up to you.
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