The Dynamics of Divorce 43
of the work force and constitute 52 percent of the voting populace.
Women are now awarded 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees.
This steady march of women into the modern workplace has
been an exciting and generally very positive development, but it
does seem to have caused some unavoidable disruption to the
traditional family unit. If both parents are now working, they
face a simple but overwhelming question: “Who is going to take
care of the kids?”
As women’s professional stature and economic power have
grown, many have sought to escape marriages in which they
have been dissatisfied, but upon which they had depended finan-
cially. An inevitable cycle of disruption has followed. As working
mothers divorced, their already serious problems finding ade-
quate childcare have worsened; the number of children living in
poverty has increased because absent fathers are less likely to pay
child support; and single-parent and stepfamilies have begun to
evolve as being something of the norm.
I am woman... hear me roar. Many women, particularly the
younger and better-educated, professionally minded “yuppettes,”
can quite legitimately view their newly found personal freedom
as an auspicious development. Conversely, the sour-grape syn-
drome often abounds among the men. Many of my male clients,
formerly rather complacent about their marriages, and hence
astonished to find themselves in my office, are certainly quite
vocal in accusing the women’s movement of being a prime mover
in causing the breakup of their marriages.
The women’s rights movement has indeed fostered a more
equal marital relationship in which the needs and wishes of both
partners are jointly considered. Expectations concerning the qual-
ity of the marital relationship have been deepening ever since the
1920s. Husbands and wives are expected to communicate and
“share” more with one another and to provide emotional support
to a greater degree nowadays than ever before.
Relationships failing to live up to these higher standards may
well be jettisoned. In fact, many experts feel that one significant
reason there are apparently fewer unhappy marriages today is
that many of the less-than-perfect marriages have already been
ended by divorce.