Gender Roles In Divorce

While I cant even begin to understand why divorce has been on the up rise for many years now, after reading the articles “Toward a Better Understanding of Emerging Adult Men’s Gender Role Journeys: Differences in Age, Education, Race, Relationship Status, and Sexual Orientation” and “Divorce is a Part of my Life... Resilience, Survival, and Vulnerability: Young Adults’ Perception of the Implications of Parental Divorce” it is evident that gender roles may play a bigger role than I originally thought. In the article about male gender roles there are five phases of acceptance that come up; acceptance of traditional gender roles, ambivalence about gender roles, anger over gender roles, personal-professional activism and finally celebration/ integration
of gender roles. What came to mind immediately after reading these phases was how easily a man’s perception of gender roles could cause a relationship to crumble. When a man is in the first phase of accepting gender roles he is in full belief of traditional gender roles. With society today and the rise of women’s independence and lack of dependence on a man this can cause tremendous problems in a relationship. Of course if both parties of the relationship are on the same page about gender roles and whether or not they are traditional or not can change this.
When a man enters the second and third phase of gender role transitions a man is both confused and angry. His lack of understanding, along with a lack of communication within the relationship could easily cause a marriage to end in divorce. When a man is uncertain of the role he is suppose to play in a relationship it can cause confusion and frustration, which in turn can easily turn to fighting and arguing. Through out this transition from traditional gender role beliefs to celebration of gender roles, men may begin to question their gender role identity and this can cause the transition to be quiet hard on relationships ending in divorce before the transition is completely over to phase five. While divorce seems to be so common these days from what I’ve read in books for other classes it really hasn’t raised at all but rather stayed unchanged and we see a decrease in marriage instead. This may be because many of the young adults approaching the phase of marriage are deciding against it because of their experience of watching their parents divorce. As the second article about divorce discusses vulnerability and feeling as though their parents failed to protect them, lacking responsibility and focused on
their own needs. This can cause children to grow up much too quick therefore when these children approach the phase of marriage in their life they may decide against it rather than take the chance of repeating their parents. The article also discusses the children of divorced families thirty years after the parents’ divorce and what they confirm as a learning experience, but also expressed lower expectations and a less readiness to encounter adult responsibilities. Both of these can be another reason children of divorced parents may choose to not marry.