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Divorce in America

In: Social Issues

Submitted By RSwanson2
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Divorce and the Destruction of the Family
Ron Swanson
Western Washington University

The Destruction of the Family
Throughout history, societies that valued traditional marriage and sexual abstinence were able to remain fundamentally strong and have flourished. Once a society decides to abandon these simple principles, destruction inevitably follows. J. Unwin (1934) wrote, “In human records, there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence” (Unwin, 1934, p. 174). In today’s society, family and marriage are not defined by the traditional definition handed down through several millennia of history; rather the definition has been warped, and a new unstable version of the family has been accepted by our society.
Traditional marriage is by its nature, the foundation of the family. The family is the building block of society, and marriage is the basis of the family. The devaluation of the conventional family, and more specifically, the destruction of traditional marriage by divorce, can have no other outcome but the destruction of our society. There are many reasons to evaluate why we have arrived at this state in our society: the growth of consumerism and commercialism, influence of Hollywood over our lives, the decline of religiosity in the United States, the decline of the social order and neighborhood relationships. All of these reasons are legitimate causes for the decay of our society. However, only one cause has wielded its destructive effects over all others. This leads us to our thesis:
The proliferation of divorce in our culture will cause the eventual destruction of America by: increasing the potential of child abuse, growing the number of single-parent homes, and destroying parent-child relationships.
Introduction to the

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