Transcription
Hey there folks, welcome to weeks 11 and 12, which talks about divorce and what generally happens when a marriage falls apart.
A couple of announcements before we get started. Your autobiographies are being marked; you'll get feedback in a couple weeks' time. I should have a better estimate after a little bit. For next time, just note that for both this class and generally in all classes, I would advise you to include your last name in the file title. I've got about half a dozen different sociological autobiographies, and it makes it difficult when I download them and then have to go through them. So just for the sake of my ease and for the sake of your other professors' ease, I again recommend including your last name in the saved title.
If you can tell, I am fighting off a cold. I can feel it in my throat and in my lungs, so I'll try to pause the recording if I need to stop and hack. But I may need to take a longer break halfway through and then post the second part in the next few days or maybe next Monday.
Today though, for now, like I said, we are looking at divorce and kind of what happens and how that plays out. We'll start off by looking at some of the historical and legal contexts of divorce, especially in Canada. We'll ask the question of how we actually study divorce. What are some of the methods that we can use? It's not as straightforward as perhaps you might think it is.
We'll look at what some of the general trends and patterns are. We'll look at some of the theoretical explanations that can address why and how people get divorced. We'll look at some of the risk factors for getting divorced and some of the consequences and complications. Finally, we'll conclude by looking at remarriage and what can happen with that.
So to start off with, I've got a cough. One sec. Right, so to start off with, almost nobody enters a marriage having in mind that it'll end soon or that it'll end in separation or divorce. A national study showed that roughly 95% of Canadians still believe that marriage should last a lifetime, and more than 90% expected their marriage or relationship to last the rest of their life.
However, despite these expectations, many marriages do still end up in divorce. Prior to the modern era, divorces were really difficult to obtain and they were relatively rare in Canada. Dating back to Confederation, the civil code of Lower Canada had a provision stating that marriage can only be dissolved by the natural death of one of the parties involved. While both live, it is indissoluble.
So until the 20th century, a marriage essentially constituted an economic transaction that involved not just the couple but had implications for their family as well. We've talked about this in earlier classes; it was not just an individual affair, it was a whole village or community affair. The dissolution would impact not just the individuals but the communities as well.
Like I said, it was really hard, if not impossible, to do that. Prior to Parliament's passage of the Divorce Act in 1968, adultery was the single universally acceptable reason for divorce. The Divorce Act then of 1968 established a unified legal approach that gave both spouses equal rights to pursue divorces based on the categories of adultery, convictions for sexual offenses, bigamy, mental or physical cruelty, a permanent breakdown arising from three-year separation, and other selected conditions.
So again, that's adultery, convictions for sexual offenses, bigamy, mental or physical cruelty, a permanent breakdown arising from a three-year separation, and other selected conditions. With the Divorce Act of 1968, the number of divorces increased dramatically. It was further reformed in 1985, which simplified the legal process to further allow what are called no-fault divorces after just one year of separation.
Here then, the number of divorces surged to an all-time high of more than 96,000 in 1987 before dropping below 80,000 in the mid-90s, stabilizing in the 70,000 to 75,000 range throughout 2008. Although talking about numbers themselves doesn't necessarily reflect the total proportion, we'll talk more about what the sort of actual rates are just here in a bit.
Gotta pause. So again, you may have heard in the media or people sort of sensationalizing this notion that divorces are on the rise or that people don't care about marriage anymore. That's just not true. It has been decreasing since the surge in the 1980s, and again, as we'll talk about later, it's kind of flatlined. But it's well under 50%.
Also note that the most current official stats are from 2008. We'll talk about the reason for that here in just a few slides, but the unofficial stats have also shown them to be stable as well. The evolution of legal statuses and a liberalization of attitudes towards marriage and divorce helped ensure that the social stigma associated with divorce also gradually declined.
I remember even, you know, growing up when and where I did in the States, like it was small-town America in the 1990s. I remember there being one girl in my class whose parents were divorced, and it was kind of weird and unusual. But since then, I think it's become a lot less stigmatized. In hindsight, you know, we were—I don't know about we, like I didn't talk to her much—but I know people were kind of mean to her about having parents that were divorced. That was just so unheard of.
But again, that's small-town America, and I think here in urban London in 2024, it's way less of a big deal. The idea of the no-fault divorce facilitated the normalization of the process. You know, this notion that sometimes these things just happen. People grow apart, and it's no one's fault.
Canadian divorce laws modernized in concert with growing secularization, so you know, trending away from religiousness. Most Canadians currently believe an uncontested divorce should be possible if a relationship lacks love and mutual respect, or certainly if a partner engages in cruelty or abuse.
Right, so having explored the modernization of Canadian divorce laws and the cultural attitudes surrounding divorce, we can now shift our focus to how sociologists approach the study of divorce. This includes examining divorce through the different levels of analysis: micro, meso, and macro, to understand its complexities and broader social implications.
As mentioned, divorce can be studied by sociologists at the micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. Using the microsociological approach doesn't really explain much about divorce in the bigger picture. A microanalysis would look at the grounds for divorce; it might look at the dynamics in relationships, communication issues, conflict resolution, for example.
While these are certainly important things to look at, especially as sociologists, they don't tell us too much about the wider society and about divorce in the broader context. So studying divorce at the meso and macro levels, in this sense, is much more informative.
Using a mesosociological approach enables researchers to identify the major life course and demographic variables that predict the likelihood of divorce. Such variables cannot cause divorce but can be identified as predictors. Everyone doesn't have the same likelihood of divorcing; it's not like just a flip of the coin going into marriage whether it's going to end up in divorce or not.
We'll look at what some of those risk factors are, but you know, we can look at things like age at marriage, socioeconomic status, religiosity, education level, geographic locality, things like that. It can be determined who is more likely than others to divorce.
As you might expect, using the macrosociological approach involves looking at bigger changes in society. For example, later in class, we'll look at how or we'll talk about how changes in the institution of marriage and the legal structure of society contributed to the rise in divorce rates in Canada.
We already mentioned how changes in divorce laws in 1968 and 1985 made divorce much more accessible, so rates increased. It wasn't that all of a sudden people were entering marriages that they were no longer committed to; it's just that the legal framework for divorce was changed, but not a lot else did.
Along with those changing legal frameworks and more people getting divorced, that then brought about changing cultural values. These changing cultural values mean things like less stigma and more options outside of marriage. Economic cycles play a role as well; couples are less likely to divorce during recessions, for instance, probably because they're working hard together in tough times.
It's also just not as financially accessible. This is only a temporary phenomenon, though. Gender role expectations may also be contributing to increased divorce rates as well.
For this, these next two slides note the trends and patterns, not necessarily the specific figures. For those who have reached a marital age of 15 and older, there's a slight increase in the percentage of single individuals from 27.1% in 1991 to 29% in 2019.
So again, just a slight uptick in the proportion of people who are single. Those currently married have also declined from the same period, from 52.9% to 44.8%. The proportion of individuals currently divorced, which is 6%, has increased since 1991 at 4.3%.
Canadians living in common-law relationships have witnessed the largest growth, from 6.9% in '91 to 11.8% in 2019. More older adults are now legally divorced but currently living in common-law relationships, from 4.4% in 2019 versus 2.4% in 1991.
Guys, I'm going to be honest, this is absolutely murdering my throat. I think I'm going to call it a night, call it a short class. Hopefully, by next Monday, I'll be feeling better, so I will just end things here.
Have some tea and maybe some honey or some lemon drops, and I will get back with you later. Again, hopefully, it'll be posted by next Monday, the last day of classes anyway. So we'll do that. Take care.