Marriage And Divorce

Improved Essays
Marriage and Divorce The article, “The State of Our Union” by: David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, discusses marriages and marital relationships in the United States. Rutgers University utilizes yearly data on marriages and divorces. This information and statistics show both increases and decreases in marriages among men and women of different races and ages throughout the decades until the new millennium. “The State of Our Union”, shows us that most people plan on getting married in their life ( Popenoe and Whitehead 390). The direction of persons getting married in the past forty years has decreased. One reason for the decline is the fact that men and women, whether single, married or divorced, wait until they were just shy of …show more content…
From the time of the pilgrims until around the 1960s, the divorce rate climbed up. The rate is finally slowing down, and is continuing to decrease after 1985. The rationales for the reductions are both: persons getting married at an older age; and their increase in receiving a college degree. Divorces per 1,000 increased from 9.2 to a peak of 22.6, but subsequently dropped to 16.4 in 2005. African Americans have a higher divorce rate than white both male and females. “The State of Our Unions”, suggests divorced men are likely to have a second marriage unlike women who do not remarry right away. In total, 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce or separation. The Rutgers’s State University study shows the uneducated have a higher divorce rate especially when people marry young (Popenoe and Whitehead …show more content…
The number of persons not married has increased to 15 percent from 5 percent during 1950s. Presently, the foundation of a marriage has evolved into more of an unmarried cohabitation. In the new millennium, women have more freedom and independence in marriages. The American marriages today focus on partner’s needs rather than the classical objectives of making a lot of money or assuring their children are better educated than the parents. In today’s society, couples look for a lifelong companion versus a business partner. When a person seeks a lifelong partner, their goal may be unachievable, and may settle temporarily until the perfect person comes along. Declines in divorce and single parent homes reflect this trend since the 1990s. Marriage for the future will be reinforced by education, access to marriage support sources and scientific publications. This trend has the outlook on marriage for the future bright and promising (Popenoe and Whitehead

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