" Rising divorce rate"- Cause and effect essay

Write an essay on Causes and effects of rising divorce rate.
Here is the first part (the causes) of my essay. Please give me comments! I found it very difficult to give examples to illustrate my points in body paragraphs of this essay. Can you suggest me something? :D

The 21st century witnesses the striking increase in the divorce rate. More and more spouses choose divorce as a way to escape from obstacles in family life. The reasons for the rising divorce rate fall into three main categories: changes in women's roles, faithlessness of spouses and pressure from idustrialized life.

Firstly, women's changing role in society is the most noticeable cause. In the past, women spent most of their time at home doing housework, taking care of their children and husband. Meanwhile, men were considered to be the bread-winners. Therefore, women had to depend financially on men. Now women's roles have been changing significantly. They attain the equality with men by being well- educated and energetic in social work. Both sexes have the same chances in earning money as long as they are qualified. It is the fact that women now can put an end to an unhappy marriage, which was impossible in the past. This is followed by the remarkable speed in the divorce rate.

The second reason for this issue is the faithlessness. With the hectic pace of life, many couples come to marriage easily without understanding well about their partners. The feeling of first passion soon leaves when spouses together undergo difficulties of the family life. As a result, adultery is unavoidable. Quarrels ensuing from that are signals of a broken relationship. Then it is no doubt that infidelity annuls marriages.

Finally, pressure from industrialized life partially causes divorces. With the development of technology, some jobs are done more effectively and productively by machines than by manual labor. This brings about unemployment among those who are not very high- qualified. Losing jobs along with escalating costs build up high pressure on spouses. Tiredness and exhaustion in work prevent them from maintaining a joyful marriage. At that time, conflicts are seen more frequently. When the endurance reaches its climax, there is no way to save the matrimony. Divorce is the solution.

That is a very nice start. I would suggest you to add some statistic to support your ideas. For example when you talk about


, you could prove that by providing some official numbers about the divorce rate.
How about family values and nowadays attitude towards marriage? Do they lead to more divorces too?
Hope this helps.

I think that last argument is weak. You talk about working hard, unemployment, stress at home -- and all of that is not exactly "industrialization." In fact, I think people have been under pressure all throughout the history of marriage, and marriage was a source of support.

Can you eliminate that last argument?

Just use the 2 good ones. It is true that marriage is being phased out because of society finally starting to embrace gender equality. Marriage is an old tradition from times when women had to play subservient roles. Many people in modern times think marriage is INHERENTLY oppressive to women -- and therefore obsolete.

If you need a third reason to replace "industrialization," how about the declining practice of religion? It is easy to find statistics to show that organized religion is less popular than ever; marriage was originally a religious ritual.

Alternatively, for your third reason, you could talk about the effect of media portrayals of romance, which show people who fall in love for life. Of course, people fall in love, in the romantic, blind, unreasoning, passionate sense, for about four years, the average length of time it takes to have a child and get it to the point where it can follow its mother about on its own. After that, a relationship has to be based on a different type of love, or else end. And to continue it requires a fair amount of hard work, as the people involved no longer have the blinding effects of love to help them overlook each other's flaws. Most people aren't taught this, though. They are taught that true love lasts for ever, that meaningful relationships can be struck up in an instant and maintained simply and easily by following their hearts. That has never been true, but imagine how difficult it must be for a married couple who suddenly discover that the nature of their relationship has changed to cope without any preparation. This is unfortunate, because marriage is a valuable social institution. Coming from a single parent household is more predictive of crime rates than either race or socioeconomic status, though there is a fair amount of overlap between those three factors.

Hi all, thanks for all your valuable help! ^^
It's a great idea to add statistics to illustrate my points, Stefanie. You suggested family values and attitude towards marriage, but I think that "faithlessness" has the meaning of declining family values because couples now do not have responsible attitude to their marrige as before.

At first, I used the phrase "modern life" but it seemed to be too general. However, you all see that the 3rd reason is not convincing, so surely I will replace it or can I only give 2 reasons for this? Sometimes, I'm not so sure about whether it is obligatory to cover all possible causes. In every paragraph and essays, I always try to figure out three supporting things because I think that the number three seems to be reasonable and sufficient.

Hi Kevin, I think that marriage is a traditional custom, not a religious ritual. Thus, when you said about the deciling practice of religion, I have no idea for this. Most of people in my country have no religion, but we still celebrate weddings. Maybe marriage is traced back to religion from long time ago? If marriage is a religious ritual, I will support for this cause to make my writing more interesting because hardly people can think of it.:)

Hi Sean, " the effect of media portrayals of romance" is a great idea. But I think that it a little bit overlaps the cause "faithlessness". Writing about this, I did think that the more couples idealize their love, the more they disappoint about each other => want to find another soulmate => adultery => rising divorce rate.

And my sentence "The feeling of first passion soon leaves when spouses together undergo difficulties of the family life" expresses this, to some extent. But my friends said that this sentence is very weak. So, should I replace the 2nd reason by the effect of media portrays of romance? or should I write another paragraph for it?

oh, no, now I think that my para should be: the effect of media => idealized love => disappointment => divorce. Should it be like that?

Another question, I always find it difficult to give examples because I can hardly find out any examples from my experiences. Should I creat an example which can go with arguments? or should I take stories of well- known people as examples? In this particular essay, which one would you recommend?

By the way, I need help from you all for this :"how to avoid the overlap among points in a para and an essay?". Overlapping is an obstacle to me. It's hard to make ideas parallel.

Cheers,

Hi, here is my effect part of this essay. Thank you for posting your comments!!!

With the causes mentioned above, divorce is no longer an uncommon phenomenon in our society, leading to certain negative consequences for both couples and their children.

According to the recent statistics, life quality of both men and women decreases considerably after the divorce. It is said that 50% of couples fall into poverty after they get divorced and women account for a significant number. Despite the big changes of women's roles nowadays, many of them still depend tightly on their husband for financial support; therefore, separating from their husband has the same meaning with reduction of financial supply, which makes their life earning harder. Although men's financial issue is brighter than women's for not having to support his wife any more, divorced men loose the physical and mental nourishment. There will be no one cooking for them so that after they come back from work they can enjoy warm meals with his cozy family, and there will be no one reminding him of going to bed when it is too late. It is even hard for him when he does not have a wife beside encouraging him every time he fails and congratulating him when he wins. Life is then really miserable for both men and women.

Not only the couple suffers from the divorce, their children also become the innocent victims. They loss the care and support from one of their parents who ever stays with them in a united family. They are likely to feel unsecured by the change because they do not have the protection and caring from the parents as before. Many children turn out to do badly at school and usually misbehave after their parents get divorced. To make the matter worse, the divorce does create in the children's mind the fear of the failure of marital life which badly affect their confidence and belief of life when they grow up.

In conclusion, couples should only think of divorce as a final solution after they have considered carefully the pros and cons that it may bring about for their life and their children. The fewer couples get divorced, the more children can benefit from their parents.

That is so interesting to think of marriage as a custom independent of religion. I was brought up Catholic, so marriage was a religious thing. I thought that, in general, it was religious. However, even though many people get married they are not always religious. But anyway, in my experience it seems that marriage and religion are closely related.


It is okay to create examples. the greatest teachers ever made up parables and folk tales. You can cite common examples, like... well, you can mention some very successful married couples who avoided divorce by avoiding the things you give as causes. Plenty of world leaders have successful marriages, because they want to show that they are stable, reliable.

Look, you ended this with a mistake! In conclusion, couples should only think of divorce as a final solution after they have considered carefully the pros and cons that it may bring about for their life and their children. This is like an ARGUMENTATIVE essay! You should conclude with a little discussion of what it means that these things cause divorce -- conclude by reflecting on the causal relationship you described.

How do you avoid overlap? Write paragraphs this way:

Write a topic sentence that makes a point; write a body sentence that expands on it or explains it; write another body sentence that gives an example of it; write a conclusion sentence that mentions the point from that sentence in connection with a point from the next paragraph.

I hope that answers your question a little!!

That seems about right.

The effects part of your essay seems to be fairly solid. You might want to consider the effects on different types of family, though. At the moment, you discuss the effects as if every family consisted of husband, wife, and 2.23 kids. What about people who divorce after the first year, before ever having children? What about couples that break up because they cannot have children, for that matter? I imagine divorce is way easier if there are no kids. That eliminates custody battles, and means that both people are probably sill working, and so not financially reliant on each other, but that's just a guess. What does your research say? Also, what about cultural backgrounds. Devout Catholics would find a divorce much worse than a secular couple, because the Catholics would find little understanding from family and friends (assuming they too were Catholic). Again, try to think about the diversity of families, even when limiting yourself to families that involve marriage, when looking at the effects of divorce.

Hi Kevin and Sean,
I appreciate ur valuable help! ^^
I learn a lot from you. Thanks again for your time! =D