"Families in the News"

"Split divorce: 'Collaborative divorce' helps people avoid judges, confrontation and drama"
McClatchy-Tribune Business News
January 14, 2007 Sunday

This article is about "collaborative divorce." It is an up-and-coming way for couples to work together on taking apart their marriages. Subjects claim that it aids the process of divorce by making things less damaging than they have to be especially when children are in the picture. "At the heart of the procedure is the belief that the old-school adversarial legal split leaves both spouses at a loss, in pocketbook and in spirit." Each spouse hires an attorney who zealously advocates for his or her client's positions and it costs between $5,000 and $15,000. One lawyer, who has been in family law since the 70's, has worked on only about 30 collaborative divorces, compared with somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 litigated divorces and an equal number of mediated divorces. There are no statistical results, research findings, or informal interview results presented in this article.

The Associated Press State & Local Wire
September 14, 2006 Thursday 4:39 PM GMT
"Divorce rates down, but many families still struggle"

The number of divorces granted each year nationwide has declined steadily since a peak in the early '80s. This article uses statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that list the divorce rate at 5.3 per 1,000 people in 1981, and at 4.0 per 1,000 in 2001. Reports show Connecticut has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country, but the local families still suffer. According to statistics released by the CDC in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, about three of every 1,000 people in the state were divorced. So far this year, 421 divorces and one annulment have been filed in Norwich Superior Court by New London County residents. Numbers from the New London Superior Court were not available.The average divorce, according to a 2003 Utah State University study, costs a couple $18,000. Connecticut divorce law lists 10 reasons parties can file for divorce, including adultery, non-legal separation for 18 months, fraud, abandonment, imprisonment and hospital confinement. The article is not clear on the methods of research that companies like the CDC used to gather their stats. It states that moving on can be especially difficult for some adults, particularly those with young children. Though some children require minimal guidance to handle a divorce, some take the news and the adjustments to heart. An article like this proves beliefs that divorce can be stressful on families but at the same time acknowledges that if paid attention to closely, children and adults can make it through withought having a tramatic experience. Ignoring feelings and not paying attention to signs of depression, etc can only make divorce worse.


"Group to push divorce reform: Family Foundation says it will propose tightening Virginia's no-fault laws"
Richmond Times - Dispatch
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
January 5, 2007 Friday

Research findings and facts for this article were given by The Family Foundation of Virginia and the Virginia Department of Health. The Family Foundation of Virginia, which was criticized last year for opposing same-sex marriages when heterosexual marriages are collapsing, says it will propose tightening Virginia's divorce laws. In 2004, the Virginia Department of Health reported 57,510 marriage licenses were issued and there were 29,411 divorces. the Family Foundation surveyed more than 500,000 households on a variety of issues last September. This article presents no information about how facts were collected or how the subjects mentioned were recruited. There is no sufficient information to evaluate the quality of this research or data collection. This article does not seem to have any biases as far as political ideology, theoretical framework, and sets of beliefs are concerned. Although it is very evident in the article that, the Family Foundation of Virginia which is a conservative organization, opposes same-sex marriages. "The Family Foundation was the leading proponent last year for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages in Virginia. Opponents of the amendment, which passed, said the foundation should be more concerned about the high divorce rate."


Church offers help for stepfamilies
The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania)
January 11, 2007 Thursday

This article talks about a community church called The Living Word and a confrence that it offers designed to help stepfamilies stay together. "We want stepfamilies to know that the blending process takes time and youhave to commit to the process," she said. It can take five to seven years till you really feel you have your own family." The conference coordinator from the church makes staements that contain stats and privileges and we are lead to assume that she recieve this information from some educational or outside source. The article gives facts about the step family such as, By the year 2010, it is predicted that there will more stepfamilies in the United States than any other type of family, Approximately one-third of all American children are living in a marital or nonmarital relationship cohabiting stepfamily home, Forty-six percent of marriages today are remarriages for one or both partners. The source for this information was provided by Successful Step families, based in Amarillo, Texas. The set of beliefs that I can come to terms with here is the fact that this church feels that people need religion in order to cope with changes in family. That could quite possibly be controversial.


"Government should stay out of divorce"
The Collegiate Times via U-Wire University Wire
January 18, 2007 Thursday

There are no research findings cited in this article and the authors provide no information about the way the “facts” were collected. Some facts that are presented are, no-fault divorces are currently legal, allowing a marriage to be dissolved without fault, according to Americans for divorce hreform, probably, 40 or possibly up to 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce if current trends continue, etc. We can see a bias in the politics behind the institution of marriage in this article. It states, "lawmakers are currently looking to change the divorce law to make it more difficult for people to get divorced. Now that Ballot Question #1 defines marriage as a union between a man and woman, officials are working towards lowering the current divorce rate in Virginia." This is a problem in itself because considering the many diverse populations, same-sex marriages and so forth, how is that the very thing we use to voice our opinion ignore lifestyles that we as the people hold? This definition is conservitive and just wrong. Also the fact that the governement is questioning the people's decisions to get divorced completely rejects the very freedoms that they and our nation claims to give us. "[...] allowing the government to place restrictions on allowing divorces in Virginia ultimately denies many people their rights to happiness." We can't make people do what "we" think is the right thing. This is not a utopian or whether perfect society.


Then, write a concluding paragraph addressing the following questions:1. Can you identify some main debates (controversies) for your topic? Do you think the authors’ positions in these debates (i.e., their values) affect their presentation of the facts and their conclusions?2. What can you conclude about the “trustworthiness” of information about families as presented in the popular press? Are some press sources more “objective” than others? How do you think the coverage of family issues in the media affects our knowledge of families?

Some controversies that I noticed in the five articles that I picked, were that of organizations claiming to make the divorce process easier for clients but at the same time they are charging people an arm and a leg to do so, another article brought light to the fact that are very on ballots as far as politics is concerned only considers one traditional type of relationship between a man and a woman as far as marriage is concerned (this is wrong in so many aspects seeing that our society has a variety of different/ alternative lifestyles). Also the government a different organizations are trying to make divorce harder to come by seeing that the rates have recently risen in the past few years but how can you legitimaize and judge what someone should put up with? Who are we judge whether someones decision to divorce is justified. We need to pay more attention to people that are considering marriage and help them find ways to figure out if marraige is something that they reakky want to do, so that people aren't marrying forthe wrong reasons. Lawyers and so forth should focus on the drama before it gets to the point of divorce. All of my articles were from newspapers, so they all seemed to point out views, concerns, and biases from within the public. There was maybe only one article that I could tell that the author clearly shared some negative feelings towards divorce. Divorce for everyone is not stressful and emotionally charged and they kind of assumed that for all situations. I couldn't find one article that talked about couples personally finding ways to make divorce simple and fluid for themselves. Divorce in some of the articles seemed to only be easier for those that had money to pay for a team of specialized lawyers or those that were religous. And even the religous help cost money. Our economy and money markets are a concern even here where are citizens are in times of need. As far as the "trustworthiness" of these articles is concerned, one will just never know. Alot of articles quote everyday people and its always hard to tell what validation an article may have. There are too many things that come up in our society that are forever changing, evolving, and transforming. Some articles used facts and stats from organizations like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Family Foundation of Virginia, and the Virginia Department of Health. Coverage of family issues in the media affect our knowledge dramtically. It can make us more aware of things, it can help us find ways to get help, it gives us advice and so forth.