Marriage And Divorce In The United States

Improved Essays
Marriage and Divorce
In most developed countries marriage has evolved a great deal compared to a hundred years ago. Waiting to get married till after having had completed a college degree has become increasing common among young adults. The feminism movement has opened the door for women to pursue any career they want, and it is now common for both partners to have full-time jobs. Marriage has also become more of a choice to follow love and has broken the mold of societal expectation on gender roles. All these things have been amazing advances in society, but how have they effected the rate of divorce? The age of when married, cohabitation before marriage, education level, and religion are all factors to consider when looking at the divorce rate of a person in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
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Divorce is defined as “the action or an instance of legally dissolving a marriage” by Merriam Webster dictionary (Divorce , 2011). Now one might think this government official process would be easy to track and collect data about, but it is quite the opposite. Psychologist Bella DePaulo talked about in her article, that the definition of divorce rate has become a controversial topic among psychologist (DePaulo, 2017). To clarify when the statement 50% of marriages end in divorce is made, they are making a very generalized statement claiming the probability of a marriage ending in divorce (DePaulo, 2017). Things like the age when married, not cohabitating before marriage, education level, and religion have shown to decrease a couple’s probability of divorce. With this in mind it is time to take a deeper look at each one of those

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