WETZSTEIN: The good, bad and ugly of divorce

I think the break down of the family is the single biggest problem in America and the problems just trickle and grow from there. Do you really have to outline that an abusive relationship is OK to desert as quickly as possible? No. I would guess a vast amount of divorces are based on the childish notion of never ending happiness and self- serving, immediate gratification. All things we at one point or another try to teach our children that it IS NOT ok to live that way. I understand sometimes one spouse would give their left leg and right kidney to change and save their marriage but the other spouse is simply nowhere to be found. What do you with this? I think it's like many things that have a terrible negative impact on families, children and society. It is going to happen so you might as well get on the bandwagon and promote as many positives about it as you can possibly find or make up! It seems the world is Pro Divorce. The choice for marriage and every choice after starts with individuals and more importantly, humans. Humans who are immature, selfish, and can easily trade their mistakes in one type of life for all the same mistakes in a new life. It just feels better, for awhile.

Very nice article! There was some good, bad and ugly in the form of sources, as their must be in a debate provoking article. Thank you! Professionals and "professionals" come in a mixed bag, quoting and "proving" about anything you want them to. Psychologists and counselors are constantly at odds one with another. Some are enmeshed with the deceptive divorce and domestic violence industry, making good look evil and evil look oh so GREAT! (www.mediaradar.org) Many hangers-on in this largely parasitic industry may otherwise have trouble finding legitimate employment on their own real merits. They can make their exploitation and abuse of women and especially children look admirable by promoting indiscriminate divorce in their own best interest. They are as good as practically any other pied piper. It's "in the child's best interest," wonderful and all for the sake of saving our children. This self promotion of one's own parasitic industry cares not one iota about women or children as it pretends. But isn't it all OK since it ferrets out all of the bad men, even if they have to trash far more good men and fathers just to be sure they get that one actually bad one? Isn't it OK to use lies, abuse, trampling the constitution and unlimited parasitic action in conjunction with the "legal" system in the land where freedom, truth and justice prevail? The best psychologists and counselors tell us that 1/3 of their associates will harm you while 1/3 will do you no good and the remaining 1/3 can actually help you help your own situation. The bottom 2/3 won't even tell you this. Guess which third (or two) is promoting the divorce/domestic violence industry while milking all citizens to the tune off over 100 Billion per year? To get a small taste of this, what this industry is all about, read Dr. Stephen Baskerville's book, Taken into Custody" or search up his youtube speeches. He documents around a thousand additional real professional sources including former industry insiders. I've witnessed far too many cases myself. The worst of all predators have always historically hunted in packs. Things that didn't make sense start making perfect sense once you find out their real workings, agenda and motives. Sugar coated excrement? I used to support this agenda. I was floored once I found out what I was ignorantly supporting in the name of all virtue and goodness. The Nazis likewise did this in the name of "for our children." We'll look back in perhaps 50 years and see this placed smack-dab along side Soviet and Nazi socialism, KKK, witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, segregation, slavery and so many other historical, current and future scams using the same basic blueprint.

I work with older people and I can tell you that couples who have stayed together end up much happier.

I found this citation interesting: "The professors disputed the IAV study's findings about the costs of divorce, saying IAV failed to account for the financial benefits that some women experience after divorce. Moreover, the professors said, no-fault divorce is associated with other positive benefits, such as an 8 percent decline in the suicide rate for women, 30 percent decline in domestic violence and 10 percent decline in the number of women murdered by their partners." Soooo, divorce is GREAT for women - that's probably why they file it in the vast majority of cases. But, what's the impact on men? Since the suicide rate for divorced men is dramatically higher than that for single or married men (or women as a whole), it appears that divorce isn't so great for them. Who gets stuck with the bill supporting the new-found financial freedom for those recently divorced women? Who loses most, if not all, of their relationship with their children? Hmmm, maybe there's a link between the divorce rate and the suicide rate for men. But then, nobody really cares about men anyway. Men comprise almost all deaths in war and work, and almost all of the populations of homeless people and prisons. Where's the outrage at those statistics? Not a peep from anyone. All we hear about is the tiny fraction of men who are priviledged, making rediculous sums of money and holding power over everyone else.

Interesting take roadkill. Maybe you should get a job writing for the Times.

The value of divoce isn't the real issue to be defined, but the value of marriage and family commitment. Romantic attachment rather than family commitment seems to be the current foundation for marriage and family rather than the icing on the cake. Why do we expect marital and familial commitment over many often complicated years to always be easy and painless? Children expect perpetual ease and a life without pain. Becoming an adult means we understand life is very painful sometimes. When did personal ease trump honorable self-sacrifice because we are committed to important others?

We are just accepting the fact that we’ve slipped into the age of modernity from a world of tradition. In it one-self is the center of the universe and dual parent family can only be a freak occurrence with a short expectancy. Marital unions are getting shorter as time goes. In a modern society couples don’t bother getting married and having a child is considered to be an extremely dangerous endeavour. The divorce industry is soon to disappear by lack of couples to rob of its wealth and its dignity. For now childbirth in the context of a family is being replaced by immigration and by sponsored child bearers. Mark my words. There is no turning back. This is modernity and nobody can escape it.