divorce and remarriage

1. Some people believe that the best way to decrease divorce rates would be to make divorce more difficult to obtain. Others think it would be better to make marriage more difficult to obtain (i.e., require counseling). What do you think? What are the pros and cons of each approach? Based on what you learned from reading the textbook, how would you go about developing a comprehensive program or social policy to reduce divorce? Learn more about current divorce laws at: http://www.divorcesource.com/info/divorcelaws/states.shtml and about marriage laws at: http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/.

2. What advantages does the initiator have in the divorce process? How is the divorce process different for the initiator, compared to the person who is left?

3. Explain why a woman's standard of living declines after divorce while her husband's increases.

4. What are some of the individual risk factors that increase the likelihood of divorce?

5. How is remarriage an “incomplete institution”?

6. Why is it riskier today than in previous generations for women to choose to be homemakers?

7. Which is more likely to end in divorce, a first marriage or a remarriage? Why?

Be sure to use information from the textbook to help you answer these questions.

1.Some pros of making marriage more difficult to obtain would be that there would most likely be a lower divorce rate. But I think that a con that would come out of making marriage harder to obtain would be the fact that people might not want to get married as often. People usually don’t like waiting that long for something they want so I doubt that we would have that many marriages anymore. Being that said, I think that would be a pro of having divorce harder to obtain. People wouldn’t want to wait that long for the process, so they might try to work out things with each other and try to fix their marriages more often than they do now. A con of this though would be that there is so many people being married, that I think the divorce rate would be even higher. Maybe people might even get married while they’re drunk if the marriage process was easier and then we would still have divorce rate high.

2.The initiator in the divorce would know that the divorce was coming and they would have time to prepare for it. For an example, they would have time to stock up on their money for a few months in advance to telling their partner that they want to split, so when they do, the initiator can move out and find an apartment. The person who is being told about the divorce does not have time to prepare for anything and may become financially unstable if they have to move out of the house too soon. The initiator also has the advantage of controlling their emotions while they are telling the person they want a divorce. They have already done through the emotions because they knew they were going to divorce their spouse and when they tell their partner, their partner still has to grieve and go through the process, which the initiator already has done.

3.In today’s world, women are still getting paid less than men and if women are going through a divorce, they are having to pay for everything themselves now and are looking for the cheap things to buy instead of expensive things. Men on the other hand do not think of the potential loss of money that will come from the divorce and continue buying what they were buying before, plus more, which will raise their standard of living and drop the womens’ standard of living.

4.One risk that I think of right away is that if you were raised in a single parent household growing up, you will most likely stick to that routine you have had all of your life and once you get married, you'll think that it's not for you. You will want to get divorced because you were used to not having that other person around. Another factor would be if you and your partner disagree of having children. People who disagree on big life decisions are likely to get divorced. You are also more likely to get divorced if you have no children, because you are not staying in the relationship for anyone but yourself and you don't have your children's feelings to worry about.

5.I think that i