Divorce Culture, The

Rating:
Summary: An excellent view of the tragic result of easy divorce.
Review: As a child of divorce I found "The Divorce Culture" by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead fascinating and wonderful. It gave me some answers I have been looking for during my life as I have undertaken to be husband and father without making the mistakes of my parents. Her account of the development of the divorce culture, and most importantly the philosophical basis for that development, is a most important contribution to the current debate on the problems facing the American Family in the late 20th century.

Nothing develops in a vacuum and the rise of divorce is not an exception. Ms. Whitehead looks at the social and historical framework that defined the family and the ends to which that framework was built to serve. By comparing the social and historic record to the theories and forecasts made before the divorce revolution, she gives us the most clear summary possible in a work meant for the public, of the failure of those theories to meet or even suggest the results of large scale divorce on the society and on the children specifically. Personally, I was able to understand that my parents had a whole social-economic model that suggested to them, however incorrectly, that it was ok for them to divorce, and by divorcing they might be doing my siblings and I a favor. The model was wrong, and now Ms. Whitehead has written, clearly and without jargon, but with full bibliographical references, that this was so. She may be forgiven for making suggestions for solving the problems of divorce that seem vague and general. She states that it will take a change in the views of individuals to change the culture of throwaway marriages. In this she is no doubt correct, and therefore suggesting how this is to be done is by nature vague and general. We must each, on our own with our spouses, make decisions and sacrifices that will make the committed family the pillar of our culture again.

Ms. Whitehead has suffered the barrage of negative criticism that comes with challenging the accepted wisdom of the culture. She has been attacked as a reactionary by those who incorrectly equate easy divorce with liberation. She shows however, that easy divorce instead limits most of the women, and children, of divorce into the lowest levels of society and the economy. Ms. Whitehead has been attacked by those who say she would suggest that women should stay in an abusive or violent marriage for the "sake of the children." Anyone who gives this work even a casual reading will see that Ms. Whitehead makes clear that divorce has an important role in extreme cases. However she correctly points out that the vast majority of divorces are not for these extreme reasons.

I would recommend this work for anyone curious how divorce became so common in America. I would also suggest that anyone in the field of marriage counseling, especially those counseling prospective couples, recommend this book to their clients.

Rating:
Summary: On the mark
Review: Ms. Whitehead really hits the nail on the head. No holds barred, but extremely thoughtful and insightful. Painfully truthful to those in society who wish to assume no responsibility for their actions, but truth seldom offers solace to those seeking to shift blame.

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Summary: Corporate absolution - again!
Review: Yes, divorce is taking a toll on children all across America. But Whitehead's analysis is another version of "blaming the victim" not the causes. In this case, the victims are families themselves. If we are sincere about forging stronger family bonds, we need to address those causal issues which really tear at the core of family stability and health -- maldistribution of wealth in America, underpaid and dead-end jobs, the consumer culture, and corporate tax evasion. The divorce culture is really an artifact of where corporate America has been taking us for the last few decades. To insist that families must simply swallow their angst and try harder to stay together is to miss the whole point -- and dispense absolution on the guilty parties