Title: The Abolition of Marriage
First published: 1996
Description: Artfully weaving poignant true-life accounts with sobering research findings, Gallagher shows how legal, cultural, and economic factors have combined to create a "post-marital culture" that punishes commitment to spouse and children, and rewards a selfishness and irresponsibility. The divorce rate: higher than ever before - and still climbing. Why? Tax laws that discourage parents from giving children time and attention that previous generations took for granted. A legal system that favors philandering husbands - and wives. The myth of the "good divorce." The truth about its devastating impact on children. Do couples who co-habit first really have better marriages, fewer divorces? And how many live-in fiances actually reach the altar? Research findings: how marital instability impacts the economy ... crime ... educational achievement ... illegitimacy ... How divorce contributes to middle-class "downward mobility," trapping mothers and children in poverty and hopelessness. Child abusers: not typically, fathers. How they prey on marital collapse. How popular culture trivializes - even ridicules - marriage and its sacrifices, and glamorizes socially corrosive alternatives. Gallagher delivers a jolting wake-up call to political leaders and opinion-makers on both the left and the right, whom she excoriates for ignoring the crisis. Yet she remains hopeful. Just as we brought the problem on ourselves, she argues, so can we solve it. And she points the way with concrete, workable proposals for restoring the foundations of American marriage, and rediscovering the adventure of married love.
Subjects: Divorced people, Divorce, Married people, Social policy, Domestic relations, Marriage, Sexual ethics, Social conditions
Places: United States
Time periods: 1980-
LC classification: HQ536 .G345 1996