Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

As one of a number of different ways in which M arriage can end, divorce differs from its alternatives – abandonment and death – in that it is the legal dissolution of marital bonds: as in annulment, neither party has obligations, other than perhaps financial, to the adult left behind. Although divorce has been permitted at various times and places, it is only in the twentieth century that it has become the common way to dissolve a marriage in most of the West (Ireland is an exception; it still does not permit divorce). In contrast, Murdock (1950) found in his classic study of non-Western societies – most of them preliterate and small – divorce rates have historically exceeded those in the West. In the majority of preindustrial settings, divorce is equally available to women and men ( Whyte, 1978 ). In many tribal communities in India, divorce is common and accomplished simply by an individual publicly walking up to a man or woman other than her or his spouse. Today, in Muslim societies, where divorce rates have been extremely high, a man can divorce one of his wives simply by repeating ‘I divorce you’ three times before credible witnesses (Islamic law does not give women the same right to divorce). But even in many settings outside the USA or Western Europe, whether Bangladesh or Indonesia, Colombia or Mexico, the former USSR or China, divorce is on the rise. For the first time ... log in or subscribe to read full text