The Solution to Americas Divorce Problem - Essay Example

Covenant marriages are opposed by traditionalists, religious leaders, and feminists stating that government mustn’t have so many rights to interfere in private life. It is known that government regulates almost all aspects of intimate relations instead of paying more attention to increasing costs of welfare. (Nocks et al. 1999)

The authors think that covenant marriages can make relations stronger and “not just harder to get out of it”. As far as marriage may be a prison to a woman, covenant marriage guarantees more freedom and leaves a woman a way to escape from it. According to authors covenant marriage can provide marginally stronger promises than common marriage. Furthermore, women will be more financially secure, because according to statistics women suffer more from divorce, especially in terms of finance. (Nocks et al. 1999)

A covenant marriage gives couple more choices. The authors’ point of view is that covenant marriages are more stable, longer in duration, and significantly healthier. What is more important is that covenant marriages protect from being emotionally, verbally, and physically abused. It is concluded that this type of marriage promotes more democracy in traditional patterns of family interactions. (Nocks et al. 1999)

Despite the provided advantages it is difficult to agree that covenant marriages are better because nowadays it is not socially accepted. Covenant marriages seem to cause suspicious and unconfident interactions in the family and surely they hurt children.

The article “Divorce Reform Won’t Lower the Divorce Rate” deals with negative moments of covenant marriages. The article is opposing the previous one stating that covenant marriages won’t decrease divorce rates. Despite the primary goal of covenant marriage to decrease the divorce rate, it won’t affect it as there are no associations between laws and the incidence of divorces. Furthermore, the author states that it is people's behavior that can change the divorce rate. (Applewhite 1997)

It is mentioned that covenant marriages would significantly raise the economic costs spent on divorce because more assets would be spent on lawyers instead of building stronger relations and taking care of children. The author suggests that “more energy would go into excruciating struggles about offspring and property”, though this time could be spent on maintaining decent relations and finding another way out. Apart from the above-mentioned covenant marriages hurt children, because parental conflicts always affect children’s psyche.

Covenant marriages would make the exposure of children more prolonged and such actions would lead to damaging circumstances involving difficult psychological recovery from parental “fights”. Additionally covenant marriages “raise hurdles that already are high enough” allowing to divorce at pleasure. Furthermore, covenant marriage is considered sexist, because its main rationale is to provide the wife with legal recourse against her husband. Thus men are forced to support their ex-wives and provide them with decent settlements. The assumption that women are always innocent victims is rather incorrect as in some cases it is a wife that asks for divorce. (Applewhite 1997)

It is necessary to agree with the author because covenant marriages have more disadvantages rather than benefits. Such marriages ignored social reality and thus were considered morally problematic. What is more awful is that children are often involved in the parental struggle for enduring better life after the divorce. Covenant marriages should be socially normal.