Finding Your Happy Days: Divorce American Style

 Posted on February 28, 2014 in Uncategorized

By sampling our social group or shaking the family tree, we can easily make the assumption that divorce is as common as marriage. Seems we can not always have one without the other.

 As published by nationalaffairs.com, a quarterly online journal of topical essays highlighting domestic policy and societal issues, only 20 percent of couples married throughout the 1950s filed for divorce. A sharp contrast to the divorce rate of 50 percent for all couples jumping the broom between 1960 up through the end of the 1980s. Did they know something that we may have lost in translation? Did Mr. and Mrs. "C" find the true secret of Happy Days? Perhaps a journey back to our future can shed some light as to why divorce may not be as strong as an institution today as it once was. Plain and simple. It was a different era for both men and women. Divorce found no comfort in the family home. Men succumbed to peer pressure. A stand up guy included a Missus and a growing family. Everyone expected it of him, his boss, his neighbors and his family. By an early age he had it all. For his bride, her trip down the aisle also began quite early, quickly accepting the role as the matriarch of the all American post war family. The housing market was also booming. Home ownership of a two parent home was on every young married couple's agenda. Families communicated daily at the dinner table and with only one television in the home, often spent the early evening hours watching Ozzie and Harriet. All was well with their world. Perhaps not entirely true. Couples experienced the same summer of discontent as married couples do today. So why the low divorce rate? Once again, peer pressure was influential. You stayed married till death do you part. Divorce carried a social stigma and unless you were married to Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde, you stayed for better or worse. End of story, end of an era. If you find yourself conflicted about filing for divorce and disappointing your Baby Boomer parents, take a moment and remember it is your marriage, your divorce, your time. We are not your parent's attorneys. At A. Traub & Associates we are a different type of law firm. We apply a human approach to each case but will work diligently to reach a resolution to your divorce concerns swiftly and professionally. If you reside in DuPage, Cook, Kane or Will Counties, contact us at 630-426-0196 and let us help bring your future into today's prospective.