Reference no: EM133193638

Can you help me understand this Communications question?

The subject of divorce has been the topic of multiple research studies over the course of many years. The research studies and results highlighted in Intimate Relationships include Levinger's Barrier Model (pp. 398- 399); Karney and Bradbury's Vulnerability- Stress- Adaptation Model (pages 399- 401); Results from the PAIR Project (pages 401- 403); and Results from the Early Years of Marriage Project (pages 403- 404). Which of these studies did you find most interesting, and why? (I chose Intimate Relationships)

The Dissolution and Loss of Relationships

The changing rate of divorce the predictors of divorce breaking up the aftermath of breakups for your consideration chapter summary

Sometimes the stresses and strains two partners experience catch up with them. Perhaps their conflict is too constant and too intense. Perhaps their partnership is inequitable, with one of them exploiting the other. Perhaps their passion has waned, and new attractions are distracting them. Or perhaps they are merely contented with each other, instead of delighted, so they are disappointed that the "magic" has died.There are myriad reasons why relationships may fail, and the deterioration of any particular partnership may involve events and processes that are unique to that couple. On the other hand, there are also personal and cultural influences that can have generic, widespread effects on the stability of intimate relationships, and relationship scientists have been identifying and studying them for years.

In this chapter, we'll consider the correlates and consequences of the decline and fall of satisfaction and intimacy. I'll have a lot to say about divorce because a decision to end a marriage is often more deliberate and weighty, and the consequences more complicated, than those that emerge from less formal partnerships. There's also been much more research on divorce than on non-marital breakups. Nevertheless, the dissolution of any intimate relationship-such as a cohabiting partnership, dating relationship, or friendship-can be momentous, so we'll examine how people adjust to the end of those partnerships, too. Let's start with a reminder that the cultural landscape we face today is quite different from the one our grandparents knew.

THE CHANGING RATE OF DIVORCE

The Prevalence of DivorceAs you recall, current divorce rates are much higher than they were when your grandparents married. In the United States, there are currently half as many Page 395divorces as marriages each year (Cruz, 2013), so the chance that a recent marriage will ultimately end in separation or divorce still hovers around 50 percent. This is remarkable because it suggests that despite all the good intentions and warm feelings with which people marry, the chances that they will succeed in living out their lives together are about the same as the chance of getting "heads" when you flip a coin.Indeed, a typical American marriage won't last nearly as long as people think it will. Only about two-thirds (64 percent) of married couples stay together for 10 years, and fewer than half reach their twenty-first wedding anniversary, so the average length of a marriage in the United States is just over 18 years (Elliott & Simmons, 2011).

That figure counts all marriages, including those that end with the death of a spouse, but the leading cause of death of a marriage in its first 20 years is, of course, divorce. Lots of people don't turn 30 without having been divorced; the median age at which men encounter their (first) divorce is 31.8, and for women, it's 29.4 (Cohn, 2010).Two other patterns that result, in part, from the high divorce rate are noteworthy. First, only about half (51 percent) of the adult U.S. population is presently married (Fry, 2012). That's an all-time low. Second, 25 percent of American children-1 out of every 4 people under the age of 18-now live in single-parent homes, most of them run by their mothers (Wilcox & Marquardt, 2010).

That rate is 3 times higher than it was in 1960.Any way you look at it, divorce is now commonplace in America. Divorce rates have also increased in other countries over the last 50 years, but the United States has had the dubious distinction of leading the pack. The divorce rate in the United States is noticeably higher than in all of Europe, Canada, or Japan (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Marriages are less likely to end than other romantic relationships are-see the box on the next page-but they're also less likely to last than they used to be.Why Has the Divorce Rate Increased?

There are no certain reasons why the second half of the twentieth century saw such a huge increase in U.S. rates of divorce. But there are several possibilities, and all of them may (or may not) be contributing influences.One possibility is that we hold different, more demanding expectations for marriage than people used to. Our great-grandparents generally believed that if you wanted to live with a romantic partner, if you wanted to have children, and if you wanted to pay the bills and live well, you had to get married. Nowadays, however, cohabitation is widespread, there are lots of single parents, and most women have entered the workforce. As a result, marriage is no longer the practical necessity it used to be.

Instead, in the opinion of some observers, people are more likely than ever before to pursue marriage as a path to personal fulfillment (Finkel, Hui, et al., 2014). Marriage is supposed to be play, not work; it's supposed to be exciting, not routine, and passionate, not warm (Amato, 2009). Thus, our expectations for marriage may be too high. A happy, warm, rewarding partnership may seem insufficient if it is measured against over-glorified and unrealistic expectations.

The Staying Power of Formal CommitmentHere are the percentages of couples of various types who broke up during the course of three different studies. Each of these investigations has its strengths and weaknesses, but together they tell an interesting tale. Divorce may be commonplace, but across various spans of time, married heterosexuals are still less likely to break up than unmarried people are. It doesn't matter whether the unmarried couples are cohabiting heterosexuals or gays or lesbians-people who are just living together break up more often than spouses do.

Furthermore, when gays and lesbians obtain legal recognition of their relationships, they, too, are less likely to separate than are those who have not made a formal commitment to each other. There are two take-home messages here. First, legal commitments such as marriages or civil unions up the ante on relationships. They're harder to dissolve than less formal agreements are, and people who make such commitments are relatively likely to stand by them. Second, the romances of same-sex couples are just as stable as those of heterosexuals when they are afforded similar institutional support. We'll see studies of full-fledged marriages between gays and lesbians in the years to come, and they will probably demonstrate that when gays and lesbians are provided similar opportunities to establish fulfilling legal partnerships, their romances function just like those of heterosexuals. Should formal commitments of this sort for gays and lesbians be against the law? Why?