Neil Sedaka's big hit "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" doesn't make much sense anymore, because, now-adays, breaking up is easy to do.
"Although divorce rates have slackened a bit since the late 1980s, the United States remains by far the most divorcing society in the world," reports David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values. "Current rates of divorce and unwed childbearing," he warns, "mean that only a minority of children today are likely to spend their entire childhood living with their two married parents."
Author Maggie Gallagher addresses this ominous prospect in her new book, The Abolition of Marriage. "As divorce becomes more the rule than the exception," she observes, "stigmas against it inevitably wither away. It is not possible to stigmatize a majority practice. Unwilling to pass judgment or risk breaches with their friends and siblings, people no longer say out loud that divorce is bad, even for the children. Instead, they congratulate one another on having the courage to create a new life for themselves." Gallagher warns that, "as the stigma against divorce collapses, so too inevitably the stain against illegitimacy. If single-parent families are as good as two-parent families, even for the children, why wait for marriage? If it is okay to create a single family through divorce, why not do it without subjecting yourself and your kids to the trauma of divorce?"
To make matters worse, our legal system has institutionalized this unfortunate trend. "By expanding the definition of marriage to the point of meaninglessness," Gallagher explains, "courts too are gradually redefining marriage out of existence. Over the past thirty years," she continues, "American family law has been rewritten to dilute both the rights and the obligations of marriage, while at the same time placing other relationships, from adulterous liaisons to homosexual partnerships, on a legal par with marriage. . . ."
Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism. Though acknowledging that the divorce revolution is continuing, David Blankenhorn contends that "a small but unmistakable counter-revolution is also beginning to emerge. Our national mood is changing. Three decades into the divorce revolution, Americans are discernably becoming tired of divorce."
We're no longer so avid to disparage marriage. "For the first time since California adopted the world's first no-fault divorce law in 1969, policy makers and citizens in a number of states have mounted serious challenges to the system of quick, no-fault divorce," says Blankenhorn. "In Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, legislatures are considering basic reforms aimed at lowering the divorce rate, such as extending the waiting periods for divorce, requiring counseling for troubled marriages, and, in cases of contested divorces, ending or restricting the unilateral right to divorce on demand." If Americans are finally disillusioned with dissolution, perhaps we can now begin the arduous task of rebuilding our broken families -- and the society that depends upon them.
