Technology Divorce and the Impact of Social Inequality on Marital Satisfaction

Part 1
Technologies that parents use to look after their children include baby monitors, cell phones and GPS locators. Baby monitors are used to allow parents to be in another part of the house while the child is asleep or playing in a play pen. The parent can hear if the child cries and needs something. The parent can be busy with some other activity without fear or worry of abandoning the child because the parent is still connected via the baby monitor.
The cell phone can be used to reach out and call the older child or to post on social media or see what content the child is posting. The cell phone allows for both a quick and convenient way to contact the child and a way to monitor the child from a distance by looking at the child’s social media content. This is a window into the child’s soul, and the parent will use it to obtain an understanding of what sorts of risks or challenges the child may be facing.
The GPS locator is a technology that parents can use to locate their child, literally. It is not a popular idea among many parents but it does provide some with the feeling of having control over the child or the ability to find the child at any given time. This feeling may be wanted by some parents, especially if they are fearful of living in a world where there are dangers around every corner. The GPS locator is perhaps the most egregious example of how technology used by parents to support their style of raising children: it essentially puts the child on a digital leash. It may not allow the parent to yank on the collar and bring the child back but the parent always knows where the child has been, and in this sense the parent is acting more like Big Brother than like a parent who knows the child must eventually learn to fly on his own and leave the nest (Nelson, 2010).
Part 2
Abstract
This paper looks at the meaning of divorce and how it has become so popular in the modern world. It also discusses the most significant difficulties for a family that can both lead to and result from divorce.
The fact that family sizes are shrinking and diversifying while half of all marriages end in divorce (Pew Research Center, 2015) shows that something is happening in the American family that is altering the way families are thought about and the way marriage is viewed. Marriage, love and romance between two people has been romanticized for hundreds of years and whereas in the past it was less socially acceptable to divorce (and before that when the West was Catholic divorce was not even permitted) today it is more socially acceptable for people to divorce. Henry VIII set the example for all modern couples who are unhappy with their marriage.
However, most people enter into marriage with the idea that it is permanent. That is the whole point of marriage, traditionally speaking (Hamilton & Armstrong, 2019). That tradition, though, was rooted in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which taught that marriage was a sacrament and thus both social and religious. The Church in the old world taught that marriage was for the production of children, which ensured that there would be a future generation. Husbands and wives were not left to discover one another on their own, unaided by any guidance, as is the case today. Marriages were commonly arranged in the old world—just as they still are in other parts of the world, such as India or China. Marriage in those parts of the world is viewed as too important to be left up to the will and decision-making of a young person. In today’s world, young people are given a great deal of liberty and so they are permitted by their parents to pursue whatever options they find to be appealing. They may make good choices but they might also make bad ones. The parents do not arrange marriages because that is a custom that has long been out of style in the West.
The divorce option creeps its way into the mind when it becomes painfully clear that one is not happy in one’s marriage: the other person is too demanding, not as kind as he or she had once been, and tolerating that individual for the rest of one’s life is not one’s idea of a happy marriage: it does not mesh with the romanticized vision one spent all one’s life cultivating in the past.
The difficulty of living with another person when there is no social or religious constraint that obliges the married couple to work out their differences and learn to live with one another respectfully and lovingly, suffering what has to be suffered, is part of the reason so many marriages end in divorce. The other part is that the idea of having children has been decoupled from the idea of marriage. Today non-procreative sex is viewed as normal, whereas in past times and in other cultures it is viewed as a perversion of the sex function. Marriage disconnected from child raising only makes it harder for the married couple to see any point to staying together when things go south.
Divorce also makes it hard for couples later on, and if there are children it can add strains to their emotional and psychological well-being as well (Hamilton & Armstrong, 2019). The difficulty for a family today is just staying together and maintaining that commitment and maintaining the family structure, which is the foundation of society and needed for society to function.
Part 3
Abstract
This paper reflects on divorce and analyzes how social status has impacted the dissolution of their marriage, what social factors may have influenced dissatisfaction with people’s marriage, how factors such as education levels and socioeconomic status impact divorce rates, and how inequality may impact marital satisfaction and marriage dissolution.
Divorce is an issue that can be caused by a variety of different factors. These factors can include the level of education of the two who are married, the amount of money or income they have, social factors like religion or media inputs or what friends and family say, and inequalities. Divorce is becoming more and more common in society because these various factors are felt to be more and more impactful on couples’ decision-making with regard to whether they should continue to struggle in their marriage or if they should quit the marriage and start anew.
People who are more educated are less likely to get divorced than people who are not educated: “College graduates were 10 percentage points less likely to divorce” according to divorce statistics (BLS, 2013). This means that people who receive some degree of culture and knowledge will likely have more discipline and understanding that will enable them to overcome the difficulties of marriage or to make a good marriage in the first place, as opposed to individuals who do not have much education, who perhaps therefore marry at a younger age when they have not acquired much understanding, and who lack the discipline needed to maintain a commitment.
People who have already divorced once and re-married are also more likely to get divorced again (Wilkinson & Finkbeiner, 2019), as they are more than likely to see marriage more as a celebration of love than as a lifelong commitment and when the love dies the marriage in their eyes is null and void.
Other statistics show that couples who marry when they are young are more likely to divorce (they are also less likely to have acquired a higher education, simply because of the fact of their age—so this finding corresponds with the finding regarding education is a factor in the staying/lasting power of marriages) (Marsee, 2019).
Age is also a factor. Couples who are younger than 28 or older than 32 are at greater risk of divorce than couples who are between the ages of 28 and 32 (Marsee, 2019). Considering that when couples are deciding to have children may serve as a factor related to age, this finding could be influenced by whether or not these couples are having children early and then stop having children or waiting to have children and then start—as either situation could be disruptive to the established dynamic and thus cause undue stress and strain that results ultimately in a divorce.
There is also a geographical factor. The state of Nevada has the highest divorce rate compared to New Jersey, which has the lowest divorce rate (Marsee, 2019). This could be explained by the fact that many people may be getting married on the fly in Las Vegas only coming to regret it later on, while people in New Jersey, which has a large low-income population may simply be not even getting married in the first place—thus a lower divorce rate.
There is also a finding that shows that couples who spend more than $20,000 on their wedding are more likely to get divorced by a rate of 3.5x over couples who spend less on their wedding (Marsee, 2019). What this shows is that couples who view marriage as an event rather than as a lifelong commitment will spend big on the event and bail on the commitment aspect when the going gets tough.
Social status has impacted marriages because getting married is no longer a necessary social state—more and more of society is okay with people not getting married and not settling down or having children. The idea is that people should have fun in their life and marriage is hard and children are a lot of work. Work and sacrifice go against the modern liberal grain to enjoy and be selfish (Jones, 2000). Today, status is connected to goods and material possessions, so that a person only feels important if he or she has a career and a house or luxury cars or name-brand clothing to show off in. The idea of doing something positive for society, such as getting married and raising children in a stable household is divorced from the social consciousness and from all depictions of reality in the mainstream media, which popularizes and promotes non-procreative, recreational sex among non-married people in many of its programs and films meant for public consumption. The culture industry has, in other words, turned on the concept of the traditional family and rejected it. This is why marriage is now disconnected from social status and why divorce is not uncommon among so many groups.
Social factors that may influence a person’s dissatisfaction with marriage include what friends think, what media they are consuming, and what their religious beliefs or groups are teaching (Jones, 2000). In the end, because marriage is a social institution, social factors will play a large part in how it is perceived and why some people simply are not happy with marriage. One social factor is the prevalence of divorce itself. Because so many kids are children of divorce, they themselves grow up not thinking highly of marriage or as marriage as something that does not have to do with stability and happiness. Another social factor is that marriage is viewed as outdated and disconnected from having children or raising children in a two-parent home. There are a lot of single mothers out there who are trying to raise children by themselves and they are suffering from fatigue, stress, and overburden as they try to balance work with domestic responsibilities.
The social factor of religion also plays a part. Religion is not as popular as it used to be, and fewer and fewer Catholics and Christians in general see marriage the way the Church used to view it—as a sacrament. That means once one is marriage there is no divorce. A marriage could be annulled if never consummated, but today’s Church hands out annulments as though they were divorces and this undermines the social respect that Catholics used to have for the institution of marriage (Jones, 2000).
Education and socioeconomic status are also a factor in divorce rates, as people with education or a college degree typically wait before getting married and thus stand a better chance of marrying with a sense of maturity about it. Those who rush into marriage young, may find that they made a bad choice when selecting a partner and the challenges of marriage may wear on them. With society basically saying it is acceptable to get divorced, these young people see the single life as better than the married life. They also may learn from their first marriage and make a second marriage that is more mature and realistic. Socioeconomic factors tend to be reasons for why people do not get married at all. Marriage and families cost money and co-habitation is clearly on the rise (BLS, 2013; Pew Research Center, 2015), which means that people are living together and having children without ever getting married, especially if they are from low socioeconomic backgrounds. They do not want to pay for weddings and all that goes with getting married, so they live together and thus divorce is never an issue because there was never a marriage.
Inequality may impact marital satisfaction and marital dissolution as well. Inequality refers to the differences between spouses as well as between certain families and the rest of society. Thus, inequality can be thought of in two terms, typically gender inequality and social inequality (which can include racial or ethnic inequality or socioeconomic inequalities).
Inequalities between two persons who marry has long been viewed as a recipe for a troubled married life as the people in one person’s background may not approve, socially, of the other person in the marriage who comes from a different background. This happens in marriages of mixed religions, mixed races, mixed socioeconomic backgrounds, and so on. Equality in a marriage tends to smooth out some of the immediate rough bumps and allows a closer meeting of the minds of all sides of the marriage to be possible. Inequality can create upset feelings and derision and lead to an impasse eventually, causing the couple to break down and abandon their marriage vows and return to their original social settings.
Inequalities between the genders can cause problems too that end in divorce. Because both men and women are working now, there will be the issue of dividing up the domestic responsibilities and deciding whether or not there will be children in the marriage. If there are disputes about children or over the domestic duties and who should be doing what, it can lead to an impasse that results in the marriage being dissolved. These issues have to be considered early on and before the marriage vows are exchanged, not later once the marriage has already been conducted.
Inequalities will hurt a marriage, however, only if the two in the marriage allow it to be a source of conflict. Just because there are challenges in a marriage does not mean the marriage has to be a failure or that the two are not meant for one another. People still have a romantic notion of a soul mate and they do not realize that their true soul mate is the one they are married to because one’s spouse is supposed to help one have a spiritual union with God (Jones, 2000). Spouses are supposed to help lift one another up towards the Ideal Forms and assist one another in their journey through life. Inequalities will not necessarily matter in that dynamic so long as the purpose of marriage is fully realized by the partners in the marriage.
Marriage is not going to be an easy proposition no matter who gets married. Even if the two are aligned in all the right ways—they share the same religion, are from the same background, have no inequalities, have settled the domestic duties conversation, and have support from those around them, marriage can still be challenging. Kids, work, homes, cars, friends—they all need maintenance and so too do spouses. People who are married must be disabused of the notion that it is a perpetual state of romance and excitement. It is very much like a job that one never leaves: life can become like one big long day that never ends—especially when kids come along. But that is what makes marriage so important: it is exceptionally hard work being there for someone, overcoming the battles and obstacles, and raising children to be good people. Yet society needs marriages and good families if it wants to persist, which is why society should be giving more positive support to families.
References
BLS. (2013). Marriage and divorce: patterns by gender, race, and educational attainment. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm
Hamilton, L. & Armstrong, E. (2019). Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families. Thousand Oaks.
Jones, E. M. (2000). Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control. IN: St. Augustine’s Press.
Marsee, S. (2019). Which couples are most likely to divorce? Retrieved from https://www.marseelaw.com/which-couples-are-most-likely-to-divorce/
Nelson, M. K. (2010). Parenting out of control: Anxious parents in uncertain times. NYU Press.
Pew Research Center. (2015). Parenting in America. Retrieved from https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-family-today/
Wilkinson & Finkbeiner. (2019). Divorce statistics. Retrieved from https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/