Divorce and Moral Values

             Divorce is a problem! Not only for the children and families living through one...or two or three, But for the people growing up in America. The problem is that the message being sent, through America's increase in divorce rates, is that it is O.K. to make a mistake (which is true for most cases). But when it comes to marriage people should not wait until they are married to realize that mistake. The main reason for this misconception and increase in divorces has a lot to do with the laws, and the changes made to them. If you look back thirty years ago you would see that every state had a Fault based system of divorce. This basically means you could only get divorced on grounds of adultery, physical abuse, mental cruelty, desertion, imprisonment, alcohol & drug addiction, or insanity (which are all very good reasons to get divorced). You would also see that every state had a much lower divorce rate. But in 1969 when James Hayes of California drafted the No-Fault Divorce Law, which was then signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan. Five years later 45 states did the same, and by 1985 every state had either switched to the No-Fault law or changed their existing laws in some way. The result was a 250% increase in divorce rates from 1960 to 1980 (according to a fifty-state survey conducted by the Journal of Marriage and the Family). Also, younger people in the U.S. who are marrying for the first time face roughly a 40-50% chance of divorcing in their lifetime under current trends (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, P.5). And of those marriages that end in divorce, many will end in the first 3 to 5 years (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, P.4).
             Although much of this increase is to blame on the divorce laws themselves the media plays a big part, especially with the increasing amount of people who own and watch T.V. I mean that when adults and children see movie stars, sports players, and wealthy people, whom most children see as role models, g...

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Divorce and Moral Values. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 11:51, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/16453.html