What are some reasons that divorce began increasing in our society in the 1970's and

(though it decreased somewhat later) remains higher than it was prior to the 70s?
Do you feel divorce is too easy or that couples give up too soon in today's marriages?
Is it preferable for a couple to stay together "for the kids" rather than pursue divorce?
When is divorce warranted? What has been your own experience with divorce?

There are many interlocked reasons why divorce rates rose in America in the 1970’s and
have remained higher since then. One prominent reason is that the home climate of the 1970’s
was largely more peaceful than that of the climate many married into the previous decades of the
1950’s and 1960’s and so many people lost the wartime motivation for marriage that they had
been encouraged to perform. Another reason is that increased economic mobility for women
coupled with higher cost of living caused the “traditional” socially-prescribed role for women of
“marrying men to then work as home-makers while they worked as breadwinners” to lose both
popularity and necessity across the country. Yet another factor of influence was the invention
and distribution of improved birth control for women, which allowed them to more easily avoid
forced-marriages and gain greater incentive to end forced-marriages. Another influence in the
rising rates of divorce was the decline in cultural support (which has continued to this day) for
long-standing conservative and patriarchal “values” such as the servile role of women in a
household, largely as a result of gains made by the many civil rights movement and feminist
movements of the 1960’s ranging from gains in access to education, bodily autonomy, economic
freedoms, and may other gains.
Certainly though, the largest influence on the rise of divorce, and likely the largest reason
it has not returned to being so rare as before, was the introduction of “no-fault” divorce. Prior to
this, the legal options for applying for divorce required proving “beyond doubt” to a court that
one spouse had committed some egregious grievance while the other spouse was completely
innocent. This, as you can likely imagine, was difficult to do under even the most exaggerated
circumstances, but is likely even more difficult than you’d guessed due to many grounds for
divorce we have today, such as domestic abuse towards women, were not acceptable reasons for
divorce throughout the majority of the U.S. at that time. By thus changing the requirements of
divorce from an archaic practice of needing to prove fault “beyond a doubt” by a spouse (a
practice that especially disenfranchised women and the poor) to instead simply declaring one’s
desire, countless unhappy or abusive marriages were finally able to be dissolved. This had direct
beneficial results, including reducing the rates of suicide for women by estimations of up to 20%
(Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J., 2003, pg. 1). This then also allowed for increased cultural
acceptance of divorce due to the rising number of divorcees as well as serving to increase the
size of the country’s dating pool, which has in turn created some self-perpetuating ideas in
society of further acceptance of divorce and decreased cultural pressure to “settle” with potential
partners who only somewhat relate due to lack of romantic options.
Regarding divorce rates today, I neither feel divorce is currently “too easy” nor that “that
couples give up too soon in today's marriages”. Divorce is still a costly process full of economic
and emotional uncertainty and that many places in the U.S. continue to make harder to do each
year. As mentioned above, the largest factor in increasing the rates of divorce in the 1970’s was
the removal of laws requiring people to remain in marriages they didn’t want to be in, and to thus
speculate individuals today “give up too easily” is generational discrimination. Similarly, posing
a question like “when is divorce warranted” is also overly-intrusive. Marriage is a social
arrangement between amoral human beings and so posing a morally-authoritarian question like
this thus requires anyone, ranging from those under the most dire circumstances to simply those
who no longer want to be in a specific marriage for disinterest, to be judged in a similarly unjust
way to the ways “fault-based” divorce laws judged spouses in the past.
Finally, on children in divorce, it is not at all preferable for unhealthy relationships to
“stay together for the kids”. My experience with my parents getting divorced is that all our lives
were improved by the decision, rather than harmed. This anecdotal conclusion is backed by
many studies to this day that continue to show that when guardians choose to do this, it generally
leads to decreased happiness and increased trauma for these children due to the obvious
emotional spill-over and constant emotional tension put off by the guardians due to remaining in
relationships they don’t want.

Reference List:
Harford, T. (2008, January 16). “Divorce Is Good for Women”. Slate. Retrieved from
www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_undercover_economist/features/2008/the_logic_of_life/divorce_
is_good_for_women.html
Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J. (2003, December). "Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law:
Divorce Laws and Family Distress." The National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved
from https://www.nber.org/digest/mar04/w10175.html