Marriage And Divorce And The Personal/Societal Influences On Both
...own words, C. Wright Mills claimed “it is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another; the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two of them.” Everyone uses their own sociological imagination to relate themselves to society and how they think they should be viewed by society. Society has an influence on a lot of things we do in life whether we know it or not. Not only can marriage and divorce be discussed on a personal level, but they are often discussed from a societal perspective as well.
From a Personal point of view, there are a lot of things to examine when trying to determine the causes of divorce. The Romans had a view towards marriage; marriages ought to be free. This meant that either spouse could opt out of the marriage if things weren’t working out for them. Centuries later, Victorian England had a vastly different view. People got married and stayed together for better or for worse. Society frowned on divorce and divorced people were likely to find themselves social pariahs. In the present century, both these views prevail. It depends on which part of the planet you live in and in what kind of culture. Divorce isn’t joy-inducing, but then neither is a corrosive marriage. Some relationships are worth working on, some aren’t. There are many different and complex reasons for divorce, each of them specific to that particular couple’s marital relationship, their individual experiences and personal problems. None of them may seem ‘common’ to the people going through a divorce, of course, but many of the reasons recur enough to warrant the term. Some common personal problems leading eventually to divorce are lack of commitment to marriage, lack of communication between spouses, infidelity, abandonment, abuse, inability to...
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