Divorce is neither so drastic nor so violent. It is not perpetrated from a single source that can be dug out by Scotland Yard or eradicated by doctors. It is not a disease of the body, but an inbuilt health condition. Someone who has a high power needs glasses. The glasses can improve the vision, maybe even stop further damage, but it cannot give the person a pair of new eyes.

Divorce, too, is such a condition of the people and it has affected society in every conceivable way.

Divorce and the Family

The high rate of divorce in the UK has ushered in maximum change where the concept of the family is concerned. The given idea of a family unit at the beginning of the 20^th century was two generations living under the same roof. This got edited to the nuclear family structure during the World Wars. Now only parents and the children lived together, while grandparents continued in the older establishment. The nuclear family, in its turn, began to get fragmented with the massive divorce boom in the 1970s. Since then, there has been no ‘slump’ in this trend. The new family units formed due to the very high rates of divorce are as follows:

·          The Single Parent Family: The most common family unit formed by divorce. A large number of UK couples have children who are dependent and underage at the time of the parent’s divorce. Over 90% of the single parent family units are headed by the mother.

·          The Lone Father Family: This is directly a fallout of the group mentioned above. The fathers who are not given custody of their children, but have visitation rights granted to them, are a ‘family’ unit by themselves. They do not live with a partner or a child, but are in touch with the children of their previous marriage and look upon them as ‘family’.

·          Joint Custody Families: When both parents prefer to retain guardianship rights of their children, joint custody families get formed. In this case, both partners retain rights of the children, who take turns at living with them. In case any of the parents is currently staying with married / unmarried partners post-divorce, the family structures can get very complicated due to the presence of children from multiple relations, and non-biological parents.

·          The Single Divorcee Family: According to the official census of the UK, a single person family is not even a ‘family by definition’. However, it has been noted by them that such lone persons also tend to answer all household-related queries in terms of the word ‘family’, partially out of force of habit, and partially out of social conditioning.

·          Cohabiting Divorcees with children / without Children: Cohabitation is quite common now, as we all know. There has been a steady increase in the number of couples who have been divorced, have not remarried, and are living in. They may be accompanied by the children of the previous alliance of any one of the partners. It can be very complicated tracing out the entire line of relations and break-ups, but there are cases where the child is actually living with a cohabiting couple where none of them are his or her parents. In other words, three or more people, all biologically unrelated to each other, might end up living together (and quite harmoniously) as a ‘family’. 

Divorce and Politics

Divorce is an important social issue and political parties do not fight shy of taking stands on issues related to family law and welfare. Reforms of divorce and cohabitation laws, initiating more economic support for single parent families, protecting rights of fathers and same gender couples are some of the issues being debated by politicians all the time.

Divorce and Economics

The phenomenon of the single and inadequately employed parent with a dependent child is one of the major results of the large number of divorces. The poverty level of the UK has been affected badly by this, and child poverty is a burning problem that needs immediate attention on part of the government, social organisations, and all support groups. There needs to be provisions made for day care facilities, parental awareness and unemployment aids, which are still quite inadequate in the UK. Awareness, in general, on child poverty is still very low.