Whose responsibility is it to reduce or put an end to the divorce rate in this modern day?
Few rational, intelligent, thinking people would argue that a divorce rate hovering around 50% is not too high.
Society suffers from a high divorce rate and the broken families that result.
Children suffer from a high divorce rate. Higher rates of mental illness, self-harm, reckless behavior, juvenile delinquency and crime, struggles with substance abuse and an inability to form intimate relationships themselves as adults.
Spouses suffer from a high divorce rate. They suffer higher rates of depression and other mental and emotional pathologies, and divorce is financially devastating to most.
While nobody would deny that some marriages that constitute a danger to one’s safety need to end, many people who divorce find themselves far more miserable than they were when they door divorced, and realize that the solution wasn’t ending the marriage, but working to repair and improve it. Given that everyone has a stake in strong nuclear families, it is everyone’s to everyone’s benefit and it is everyone’s responsibility to support strong healthy families.
Society (from local communities to the municipal, state, and federal governments) needs to support strong healthy nuclear families for the sake of the strength survival of society. That doesn’t mean that a government must impose numerous rules and regulations in ostensible support of families, subsidize families financially, or treat family members better than other members of society, but it does mean that government needs to ensure its policies, rules, and regulations do not discourage or destroying strong, stable, healthy families. An ordered and prosperous society depends upon the smallest unit of society, i.e., the family as its foundation.
When families are strong, stable and healthy, that means that each member of the family is as strong, stable, and healthy as he or she would likely ever be. Such families reduce crime rates, foster prosperity, and are less of a drain on welfare benefits and other governmental resources. It is popular in modern Western societies now for many people to believe it is not only acceptable, but even admirable, not to marry and have children with one’s spouse. Nothing could be further from the truth. People need people. So the answer to your question is clear: it is to everyone’s benefit–from the individual all the way up to society at large–to support strong, stable, and healthy families, and it is thus everyone’s responsibility to ensure divorce occurs only as necessary.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Tags: divorce, divorce rate, marriage