How to Reduce Divorce Rates in the United States - Essay Sample

Introduction

In the United States, divorces or splitting of marriages has become a norm, just like marriage. As long as people keep coming together for marriage, cases of divorce will continue to exist. Just like studying marriage and what keeps two different together, it is vital to understand why married people split or marriages do not work. In the United States, almost 40 percent of marriages end up in divorce (Allred, 2019). Due to the increased divorce cases in the United States, his paper will explore how divorce can be reduced in the United States.

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The high divorce rate means that thousands of families are split every year, adding to single-parent families' existing problems. Here are tips on how to reduce the divorce rate in the United States to address this problem.

People ‘separate’ way before Walking Down the Aisle

The majority of married couples who divorce in the United States have reported that way early in their relationships, they had an immense feeling that their marriage is somehow doomed. The divorce and separation rate is rising because the majority now takes the matter of marriage lightly. As a result, people are not investing enough time to assess their future spouses and ensure that they are the right partner (Sassler & Lichter, 2020). Investing enough time and energy to know and understand prospective marriage partners is a massive step towards reducing divorce rates.

Normalize Premarital Counselling Courses

When a young couple gets married, no one teaches them how to argue or disagree constructively. Premarital counseling can be used to lower the divorce rates in the country since couples are taught how to disagree and address conflicts, respectively. No matter how old a couple has lived together, premarital counseling can help avoid future disagreements or divorce (Stillwell, 2016). These courses are significant since they also teach financial counseling, a substantial contributor to divorces in the country. They also train married couples to understand and agree with each other on religion, sex, and raising children. If most newly married couples normalize the premarital counseling course, the rate of divorce in the country could significantly decline.

Choose Partners Without Addictions

Addictions are a threat to any human being's way of life and, more so, marriages. Any form of addiction can result in conflicts of interest in marriages. Also, addiction can result in poor judgment and reason, economic inabilities, and constant marriage conflict resulting in divorce. Any active dependency/addiction crashes any hopes of a healthy union/marriage among married couples. In a marriage or courtship, every partner must take responsibility if they struggle with food, internet, sex, gambling, or alcohol dependency (Saeed Abbasi, 2018). People who are courting and not yet married should never marry their spouses until their addiction is cleaned up. Since drug use has become a norm in the United States, the rate of separation and divorce will only decline if young people start choosing partners who are not hooked to dangerous vices.

Encourage Cohabitation

Marrying and living someone is an entirely different game to dating them. Once the expectations and roles of marriage are added onto people who have never lived together, it is merely asking them to handle more than they know or can. To prevent separations or divorces, it is recommendable for people who have never lived together and want to marry to first cohabit for at least a year before getting married (Sassler & Lichter, 2020). Living together and going through challenges together in a shared apartment will prepare people for marriage. Since cohabitation is not taboo in the United States, staying together before walking down the aisle will significantly reduce the country's rate of divorce.

Divorce has become an intergenerational cycle as many children are born of divorced parents. In the United States, divorced family children mature into adulthood with fear of commitment, low trust, infidelity cases from parents, and lack of mutual sacrifice. Many grow, having learned the wrong image of marriage. Many adults from broken marriages end up divorced compared to adults who grew in intact marriages. When am adult from a broken marriage marries another adult with a similar divorced family, the chances of remaining in the union are below 50 percent. Therefore, an increased number of broken families contribute to future generations' divorce cases. Children should be taught the importance of marriage and the need to remain committed. If such education is offered to the young people, many will begin to believe in unions and stay committed, which reduces divorce cases.

Conclusion

In the United States, separation and divorce will become routine, just like marriage and staying together. Although AMERICA's divorce rate has declined in the last decade, there is stillroom for improvement. To reduce this rate, people should invest time in assessing if their future partners are their match. Also, normalizing premarital counseling, choosing people without active addictions, and encouraging cohabitation will significantly reduce the country's divorce rate.

References

Allred, C. (2019). The divorce rate in the US: Geographic variation, 2018. Family Profiles, 23, 201. https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/fp-19-23-divorce-rate-geo-var-2018.pdf

Saeed Abbasi, I. (2018). The link between romantic disengagement and Facebook addiction: Where does relationship commitment fit in? The American Journal of Family Therapy, 46(4), 375-389. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Irum_Abbasi3/publication/332114937_The_Link_Between_Romantic_Disengagement_and_Facebook_Addiction_Where_Does_Relationship_Commitment_Fit_In/links/5ca23a0992851cf0aea6567a/The-Link-Between-Romantic-Disengagement-and-Facebook-Addiction-Where-Does-Relationship-Commitment-Fit-In.pdf

Sassler, S., & Lichter, D. T. (2020). Cohabitation and marriage: complexity and diversity in unionformation patterns. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 35-61. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jomf.12617

Stillwell, D. (2016). Helping Couples Fulfill the “Highest of Life’s Goals”: Mate Selection, Marriage Counselling, and Genetic Counseling in the United States. Journal of genetic counseling, 25(1), 157-165. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1007/s10897-015-9853-5