Are you married? If so, how long have you been married? If not, when do you plan to get married?What is your attitude toward divorce? Why do you think divorce is becoming more and more common?
better off : to be in a better situation, if or after something happens • cohabit : If two people, especially a man and woman who are not married, cohabit, they live together and have a sexual relationship. • counselor : someone who is trained to listen to people and give them advice about their problems • eventually : in the end, especially after a long time or a lot of effort, problems, etc • heaven forbid : a way of saying that you hope something does not happen • initiate : to cause something to begin • intact : complete and in the original state
opposed : to disagree with a principle or plan • overcome : to defeat or succeed in controlling or dealing with something • prevent : to stop something from happening or someone from doing something
proceedings : legal action • rate : to judge the value or character of someone or something • reduce : to make something smaller in size, amount, degree, importance, etc • seek : to try to find or get something, especially something which is not a physical object • step- : being of the stated relationship to someone through the previous marriage of their husband or wife, or through their mother or father marrying again • temporary : not lasting or needed for very long • tip : a useful piece of information, especially about how to do something or about the likely winner of a race or competition
Source: http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/pubtoptenmyths.htm
1 Do second marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages?
What do you personally think? Do you know anyone who has divorced and re-married? How is their second marriage different from their first? If your first marriage were not successful, would you probably want to try again? If, heaven forbid, you got divorced and married again, would you do anything differently in your next marriage?
2 Is living together before marriage a good way to reduce the chances of eventually divorcing?
Have you ever cohabited with a lover? Under what conditions would you live with a partner whom you were not married to? Do you know any married couples who lived together before they got married? What influence, if any, do you think it had on their marriage? If your child wanted to live together with his or her girlfriend or boyfriend, would you be opposed?
3 Are the problems for children caused by divorce truly long-lasting and not just temporary?
What do you think is the biggest problems that divorce causes for children? What long-lasting effects do you think divorce has on children? Do you know anyone whose parents divorced? What problems did it cause for them that you know of?
4 Does having a child together help a couple improve marital satisfaction and prevent divorce?
How many children do you have? How many (more) children do you plan to have? Why did you decide to have children? Besides having children, what are some other factors or things that a couple can do to reduce the risk of getting divorced? What tips do you have for improving marital satisfaction? How satisfied are you with your marriage or other personal relationships?
5 When parents don’t get along, are children really better off if their parents stay together rather than just get divorced?
Would you stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of your children? What would it take for you to divorce, even if you had children? How well did your parents get along when you were growing up? What kinds of problems did they have, that you know of?
6 Do people who grew up in a home broken by divorce have less chance of success in their own marriages than those from intact homes?
Did you grow up in a broken home? If you did, how old were you when your parents divorced? How did their parents’ divorce affect any friends you knew that grew up in broken homes? Would you rate your chances of success in marriage high or low? What factors are favorable, and what are unfavorable? What personal qualities make you well suited for marriage? What qualities make you less well suited for marriage?
7 After their biological parents have divorced, are children better off in stepfamilies than in single-parent families?
Do you know anybody who grew up in a stepfamily? If you had had to grow up in a single-parent family, do you think you would have been better off living with your father or mother? Do you think your children would be better off with you or your spouse? How well could you accept stepchildren if you got married to someone with children from a previous marriage?
8 Is a couple being very unhappy a good predictor than the marriage will eventually end in divorce?
Have you ever experienced a period of great unhappiness in your marriage or other personal relationships? What did you do to overcome the problems that were causing this unhappiness? Can you think of other things that might predict that a marriage will eventually end in divorce? If there were problems in your marriage, how would you go about trying to solve them? Would you seek somebody else’s help—for example, a marriage counselor?
9 Is it the wife, rather than the husband, who more often initiates divorce proceedings?
Of the divorced couples you know, who initiated the divorce proceedings? What do you think is the most common reason that men seek divorce? How about the most common reason for women?
1a Although many people who divorce have successful subsequent marriages, the divorce rate of remarriages is in fact higher than that of first marriages.
2a Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have a considerably higher chance of eventually divorcing. The reasons for this are not well understood. In part, the type of people who are willing to cohabit may also be those who are more willing to divorce. There is some evidence that the act of cohabitation itself generates attitudes in people that are more conducive to divorce, for example the attitude that relationships are temporary and easily can be ended.
3a Divorce increases the risk of interpersonal problems in children. There is evidence, both from small qualitative studies and from large-scale, long-term empirical studies, that many of these problems are long lasting. In fact, they may even become worse in adulthood.
4a Many studies have shown that the most stressful time in a marriage is after the first child is born. Couples who have a child together have a slightly decreased risk of divorce compared to couples without children, but the decreased risk is far less than it used to be when parents with marital problems were more likely to stay together “for the sake of the children.”
5a A recent large-scale, long-term study suggests so. While it found that parents’ marital unhappiness and discord have a broad negative impact on virtually every dimension of their children’s well-being, so does the fact of going through a divorce. In examining the negative impacts on children more closely, the study discovered that it was only the children in very high conflict homes who benefited from the conflict removal that divorce may bring. In lower-conflict marriages that end in divorce—and the study found that perhaps as many as two thirds of the divorces were of this type—the situation of the children was made much worse following a divorce. Based on the findings of this study, therefore, except in the minority of high-conflict marriages it is better for the children if their parents stay together and work out their problems than if they divorce.
6a Marriages of the children of divorce actually have a much higher rate of divorce than the marriages of children from intact families. A major reason for this, according to a recent study, is that children learn about marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents. In the children of divorce, the sense of commitment to a lifelong marriage has been undermined.
7a The evidence suggests that stepfamilies are no improvement over single-parent families, even though typically income levels are higher and there is a father figure in the home. Stepfamilies tend to have their own set of problems, including interpersonal conflicts with new parent figures and a very high risk of family breakup.
8a All marriages have their ups and downs. Recent research using a large national sample found that eighty-six percent of people who were unhappily married in the late 1980s, and stayed with the marriage, indicated when interviewed five years later that they were happier. Indeed, three fifths of the formerly unhappily married couples rated their marriages as either “very happy” or “quite happy.”
9a Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. One recent study found that many of the reasons for this have to do with the nature of our divorce laws. For example, in most states women have a good chance of receiving custody of their children. Because women more strongly want to keep their children with them, in states where there is a presumption of shared custody with the husband the percentage of women who initiate divorces is much lower. Also, the higher rate of women initiators is probably due to the fact that men are more likely to be “badly behaved.” Husbands, for example, are more likely than wives to have problems with drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity.
