Divorce no longer a social taboo...

Divorce is no longer seen as a social taboo. Nearly two thirds of people now do not think there is a stigma attached to ending a marriage as attitudes towards divorce have become more relaxed. Only 4 per cent of British people questioned said they strongly agreed that divorce is a social taboo.

The research into the changing attitudes towards marriage found that it is young people who are now mostly likely to believe that divorce is socially acceptable. Only 56 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 said that divorce was taboo, compared to 67 per cent of 24- to 54-year-olds.

The poll of 2,000 people by YouGov for the DVD release of film I Give It A Year found that the words people most associated with marriage were commitment (37 per cent) and love (20 per cent). Only 4 per cent of people said that the word they most associated with marriage was divorce. The study further found that 28 is considered the best age to get married.

Working in the family law field, where I am confronted with family breakdown everyday, I have seen not only in my professional life, but in my personal life how divorce has become the norm in modern social life. It's familiar and has ceased to be the taboo it was in years gone by. Most of us have been affected by divorce, whether we’ve gone through it, know someone who has, or have been affected by our parents’ divorce, so the taboo status has lost much of its power.

The generational difference in attitude could be put down to the young couples’ proximity to parental divorce, and an unwillingness to repeat the same mistakes. What we are seeing is vast numbers of couples who give up on marriage or their relationships too quickly before seeking professional help. It has become the easy route out to separate or gain a divorce, rather than decide that a relationship is a commitment, and particularly in marriage - one that is for better or worse. The majority of people don't understand how complex and traumatic a decision like a divorce can be, before they go into it. There is no such thing as a painless divorce; we are just getting better adjusted to it as a part of modern Britain - and as part of the modern world.
 
TV actress Alison Steadman said that the stigma of divorce is now a thing of the past. The 66-year old said: ‘I can remember when I was at school there was one girl in my whole class, her parents were divorced and it was shocking, we as kids felt really sorry for her ... her mother had married again and it felt really odd. ‘I think now it seems to be the norm for kids that their parents don't stay together, sadly. ‘But times change and hopefully, maybe my sons' generation, there will be a switch again, maybe they will think again. ‘Because divorce is so easy now and it wasn't years ago and you had to go through all sorts of hoops. It was incredibly complicated, now it's just a question of saying “that's it”. ‘Perhaps we don't put the value on it that we did, I don't know.’ The actress married Mike Leigh in 1973 and split up with him in 1995 when she left him for actor Michael Elwyn.

My mother-in-law in South Africa who works with educational institutions has noted to me on many occasion how many young people sitting in classrooms across the country are impacted by their parents' divorces. And alot of them, not only once, but multiple times, where parents have been remarried. She mentioned to me that probably about 80% of the children sitting in primary school classrooms have been affected by parental separation.

I think alot of the unhappiness and dissatisfaction in relationships is down to expectations. And the media hasn't played a very pretty game in assisting the situation either. People are people - no matter who you decide to be with, you will at some point in the relationship, be faced with their raw humanity which is in its very nature, selfish and self-preserving. More often than not, you will be faced with your own selfishness, drive towards survival and desire to gratify your every wish. What would happen if more people decided to put their partner above themselves in those tough situations when everything screams to run. There is a definite fear that this will be perceived as weakness in a dog-eat-dog world. I think that this is bravest, most courageous and selfless action that mankind has going for it. That is true love. I don't mean that this concept should be extended to relationships where domestic violence or abuse is prevalent, by all means - no - that is reserved for a different time and space. I guess that we walk around with a sincerely warped view of what love is - and it's wrapped up in the romance, butterfly, romcom context rather than the hard-edged, commitment driven, the good, the bad and the ugly-but-I-still-choose-you mindset. So I ask - what would the world be like if we all made a decision like that on a daily basis? 

The bottom line is that we cannot rely on our own strength to make this decision, because as humankind, we fail miserably at this, and we fail constantly - but there is one who can help us to do this, one who loves us impeccably, perfectly, without fail, unconditionally. He is the one how teaches us what true love is and how to operate in it, the more we surrender ourselves to him. He is the Christ.

Online Sexual Abuse

A survey by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and the NSPCC shows that half of all social workers are concerned about dealing with online sexual abuse or behavior and need more training. Key figures include:

• Almost half (49%) of social workers said that 25% of their sexual abuse cases now involve some form of online abuse
• A third (34%) of social workers said they were not confident understanding the language used by young people online
• 47% said they were not knowledgeable about how young people communicate via social networking
• 36% felt they did not know the right questions to ask to identify and assess online sexual abuse
• 30% said they did not feel confident dealing with child protection sexual abuse cases using the internet
• 50% say they don’t know what how to recognise the signs of the online sexual abuse of children