We do not have, unfortunately, any adequate analysis of the values relating to divorce in these societies. We know that in our own, divorce has been a possible, but disapproved, solution for marital conflict. That is, it seems that divorce is not as yet fully institutionalized in our own cultural structure. Certainly among some groups of our society it is still disapproved strongly. It is equally certain that this attitude is changing. Thus, although a rise in our divorce rate can not be viewed as a simple index of social pathology or even of personal disorganization, it is without question an index of social change.
In the light of these hypotheses, divorce as a phenomenon and as an experience is theoretically very interesting. It is closely tied to several sets of strong value patterns relating to the family and to marital conflict. It is an index of interpersonal strain, and within our own society it is also an index of strain in the social structure, in that (a) there are many strong, if gradually weaker, moral proscriptions against it; but (b) in spite of these proscriptions, the divorces continue to occur and the rate of divorce continues to rise as a mass phenomenon. Moreover, (c) since marital stability in our society is morally approved, since the roots of this attitude are to be found in the three major sects of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, and since divorce is also judged to be an act of self-seeking or of moral failure, it is likely that few couples divorce in our culture without a guilt component on both sides with specific reference to the divorce (aside from guilts with other sources). Thus, on both the psychodynamic and the socio-structural levels there are interesting ramifications.
Furthermore, (d) divorce as a large-scale solution for marital conflict is a relatively recent reappearance in the cultural history of Western society (for Rome in its "decline," as for Athens, the rate must have been high), yet it has been an always potentially institutionalized element in the social structure because of its many Semitic religious antecedents (both Arab and Hebrew, of course). Since these potentialities did not become actual, divorce as a social deviation is in certain respects not like crime or juvenile delinquency, treason or sacrilege.
These latter and other violations are like divorce in that they can be predicted to some extent on the basis of individual characteristics, and to a very great extent on a mass basis. However, they are very different in that prescribed modes of official and unofficial behavior exist for dealing with such deviations. We are socialized to react against these deviations with a fairly specific behavioral and emotional set, and we are even told to some extent how they ought to be punished.
This is not the case for divorce. Neither the participants nor their close friends and relatives have been taught to react in a culturally approved fashion with respect to divorce. We are all taught how to grieve at the death of a relative. We are not taught how we should behave as a divorcee. We are given many culturally approved rationalizations for failing to achieve high status in our occupation, but we are not taught how to solve or to adjust to the failure of our marriage. The general preferences in our culture for rationalistic approaches to problems fail us in this area of great emotionality. Consequently, we should expect to find a set of social phenomena of considerable interest for understanding the family patterns in our culture. Finally, since divorce is a personal and often familial crisis, study of it should add to our knowledge about how individuals adjust to crises.
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