Well, here’s a sign of the times. The Huffington Post is launching a new section devoted to divorce. It was conceived by writer/journalist/filmmaker Nora Ephron, who will also serve as founding editor.
In some ways, one’s tempted to ask: What took you so long? After all, as my colleague Bonnie Goldstein reported last week, marriage is at a historic low in the United States. And while U.S. divorce rates have declined slightly with respect to their all-time high in the early 1980s, they are still high by international standards. According to The National Marriage Project’s State of Our Unions 2007 report, for the average couple marrying for the first time, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains between 40 and 50 percent.
But, of course, it’s one thing to know that divorce is in the air and it’s another to say that out loud, as my colleague David Gibson noted last week with respect to divorce within Christian communities. Which is to say that when a mainstream publication like The Huffington Post makes divorce a special focus — on par with, say, “religion” and “politics” and “education” — that’s really saying something. (Full disclosure: I also write for the Huffington Post’s Living section.)
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Image: Redesign At The Huffington Post by jessabean
October 7, 2010, 8:08 pm
This is so needed – so needed WOW
October 7, 2010, 8:18 pm
That is an interesting development, and oddly, a positive one. There are so many implications to divorce that need to be opened up and examined – many of which you mentioned in the article.
But not only should we look at what leads to divorce, the legal ramifications, and certainly, the impacts on children – but in a country that doggedly focuses on costs, perhaps we could look at long term impacts including the linkage of divorce to poverty, to mental health, to disease, to the drain on our various social systems (such as they are), and the overwhelming price we pay in human capital.
Real dollars, and opportunity cost – on a massive scale.
October 7, 2010, 9:44 pm
I believe that taking divorce out of the shame closet would be a good thing for everyone. Especially children. And then Pottery Barn should set up a divorce registry and life in America as we know it could tick on its capitalist clock:).
October 8, 2010, 11:03 am
@LPC LOL!
October 8, 2010, 8:21 pm
As an interested party who has in recent years learned far, far more about divorce than I ever wished, I can only say that what goes on between consenting adults is no one-else’s business EXCEPT, & this is too often the heart of the matter, when children are involved. Then the statistics become not only appalling, but horrifying, not just to kids but to society at large. And yes, we can all cite cases where continuing the marriage would be even more destructive than divorce, but the fact remains that at least half of U.S. children have had their birthright of trust in their own families badly impaired, if not ruined.