Term paper on Marriage Is Less Valued

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Marriage is less valued today than ever before.

Marriage and the way we view it today, differs greatly from the past. We no longer have to be married to be a family. Our views and opinions on marriage and its meaning have changed considerably. Marriage isn’t necessarily less valued, it’s just viewed differently.

The fact that the divorce rate has doubled in the last twenty years could lead us to believe that marriage isn’t important to us anymore. Instead of persevering and working at married life, people are more frequently choosing to end their relationships. However, these divorced couples seem to be merely opting out of poor quality relationships to look for something better. In the past divorce was frowned upon, we were expected to carry on regardless of whether we were happy or not. Until 1949, there was no financial help available for divorce cases. Making the process easier and cheaper has given people the opportunity to leave ‘empty shell’ marriages behind. For example in 1991, 75% of women and 80% of men divorced before the age of 35 were remarried within 10 years. These figures show that we haven’t dismissed the idea of marriage. Repeated remarriage doesn’t mean we take marriage lightly, just that society has changed and we’re not expected to put up with being unhappy. People are demanding a better quality of marriage, it might take two or three attempts to get it right.

With the majority of one-parent families being created through divorce, we can’t use lone parents as an example of marriage being less valued. Lone parent families are often only temporarily in this situation and like divorcees go on to remarry.

On the surface, the significant decline in marriage can appear to suggest its unimportance. This can simply reflect an increase in cohabitation. Attitudes have changed, it’s quite acceptable to have a sexual relationship and children outside wedlock. Living with a partner can be as strong and binding as marriage. Many people choose to cohabit and have a family. They’re married in every sense of the word, only without the certificate. If anything it reinforces the idea that marriage is very...