Divorce
I believe that divorce is one of the fundamental causes of the decay of moral fabric in the United States. As the years go by it is becoming more and more common for children to be raised in single parent households, having to travel back and forth between two different households. This lack of a nuclear family deprives children of all of the tradition and stability that are necessary influences for normal development. “In the United States, researchers estimate that forty to fifty percent of all first marriages, and sixty percent of all second marriages, will end in divorce”. [Doherty] The effects of divorce on children and society as a whole are far reaching. Younger children in particular have a very difficult time adjusting to parental separations. At a young age kids are highly dependant on their parents for just about everything, including companionship. They spend their entire lives up to the point at which their parents divorce living in a world where mommy and daddy are not only their primary caregivers but also their “preferred companions”.[ Pickhardt] They have not yet reached the point in their lives where they have begun to branch out into society and make friends other than their immediate family so when that world starts crumbling around them they go through a whirlwind of emotions and forced adaptations which create many negative repercussions. The child’s trust in his parents begins to falter and their sense of stability is shattered. Young children often become very insecure and start to regress, exhibiting behaviors such as bed wetting and increased dependency in an effort to gain more parental attention while adolescents often tend to become more aggressive and independent due to the