Blog 13: Rising divorce rate no help to any society

In this article David Quinn describes how "marriage breakdown" rates are at an all time in Ireland. Although the rates are high for them, the rates are still low compared to other countries.

In the most recent census results showed that divorce in Ireland has increased by 150 percent in the last 10 years, which now puts them at 88,000 people. The term marriage breakdown does not only refer to those that are divorced, but also those that are going through a separation and remarriage after divorce which makes up approximately 250,000 people. The other percentage of separations is covered by those who choose to cohabitate rather than marry. The effects of cohabitation have also gone unacknowledged, but the British Millennium Cohort Study was able to show with statistics that couples who cohabitate are more than twice as likely to break-up as married parents. Quinn later begins to explain how it used to be believed that adult separations had no long term effect on children, research has also proven this to be incorrect. Two effects that were acknowledged were decreases in academic achievement and negative views of marriage as they become adults. Children who experience any type of separation between their parents, it’s a smooth or chaotic transition, tend to act out in school and perform badly. If not addressed at an early age, this can later effect their achievement in their career. Children who experience marriage breakdown are also less likely to want to marry in fear of having to deal with separation again as they did when they were a child.

When people make life changing decisions such as separation they tend to think only of how it will affect them and their child at the moment. Parent’s often fail to think of how it will affect their child later on in life. Two parents deciding to go through any type of divorce could ultimately be contributing a pattern starting where the child never gets married but has children, later giving their child the idea that it is ok to not be married and have children. It could also lead to their child having to experience poverty as an adult because of poor choices made in school which stops him/her from being able to work in the career field they want to work in. There are plenty of global issues already in the world that a “simple” separation could later on contribute to.

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