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American Morning
Divorce Becoming Routine Part of American Life
Aired June 15, 2001 - 10:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, one reason we're seeing a growing number of single dads is, of course, divorce. The latest government figures show nearly half of first marriages end in divorce. In 1998, 10 percent of Americans said they were divorced, but married adults are still in the majority. The Census Bureau reports that about 56 percent of all American adults were married in 1998. Still, divorce is obviously a big part of American life.
Joining us now to talk more about that is John Crouch. He's a divorce attorney and executive director of Americans for Divorce Reform. Mr. Crouch, welcome to the program.
JOHN CROUCH, DIVORCE ATTORNEY: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: I guess a cynic might say divorce is good for business for you. You, instead, would like to see the law reformed. Why?
CROUCH: Well, I'm a divorce and custody lawyer and I work with people who are divorced or getting divorced and with unwed parents and for most of them the divorced or unwed parenting lifestyle just doesn't work for the family as a whole. Both the mothers and fathers each think that they're going to get, should have more custody than the system is going to give them. There's not enough economic resources to go around. Of course, you can make it as a single parent, but it's a lot harder and the children lose a lot in the process.
O'BRIEN: Americans for Divorce Reform would like to do what, specifically? The laws were loosened up in recent memory, the so- called no fault divorces. The idea was to, I guess, make it easier to extricate one's self from a marriage that one did not want to be a part of. What's the matter with those laws and what needs to be changed specifically?
CROUCH: Well, what the no fault divorce did is it took us from a situation where the government was telling people you have to stay married even if both of you want out to the opposite where they treat married couples kind of like the power companies in California. They say you cannot make a long-term contract to carry out the functions of being marriage and raising children.
And just as in that situation, people can't really maintain a marriage with so much instability and when chaos breaks out around them, the players in these divorces all blame each other or different parts of the system instead of looking at the law that caused these problems.
O'BRIEN: Well, so what would you do to change it to make it better, then?
CROUCH: We believe that divorce should be available based on mutual consent in most families, that is, the parties would have to negotiate an arrangement for custody and property that they both agree on in order for them to get a divorce. So neither person would be vulnerable to the other one saying at any time I want out of this marriage and I'm taking half of all the stuff and the children with me, because two can't live as cheaply as one and two parents on different ends of the country can't provide the kind of parenting that children need.
O'BRIEN: All right, we speak on the heels of the Southern Baptist Convention, at which time some growing recognition of the problem of divorce in the bible belt came to the fore. And the numbers are even more dramatic in that part of the world where religion is very important. People are very conservative and yet despite that, the divorce rate is way on the upswing. What's going on there and what do you think should be done about that?
CROUCH: Well, studies show that while people who consistently are regular churchgoers have lower divorce rates, southern evangelicals and southerners in general have higher divorce rates than the rest of the country and kind of a good thing about this development is that the Southern Baptists, instead of doing what they very often when they're covered in the media criticizing other groups in society, they are looking at themselves and saying we have to improve our own marriages and our own denominations. And that's what I really like about this divorce reform issue. We have people from all over the political spectrum, instead of blaming each other, they're looking at themselves and saying we've all been part of the divorce culture, we all made a mistake when we eagerly greeted no fault divorce 30 years ago and this is the results.
O'BRIEN: Let me ask you -- we're running out of time. I do want to ask you about the so-called covenant marriages that some states are adopting, which essentially implement a cooling off period for marriages, you know, a two year waiting period before a divorce might become final, for example. Is this a good idea?
CROUCH: Yes, it is. It not only does that, it lets people choose if they want to make a contract for a more binding marriage. It requires more rigorous preparation before marriages than most people get. It gives you skills training on how to be a better spouse and also lets you really evaluate if you're getting into the marriage and then it requires more skills training and counseling before you get out of the marriage. And the field of marriage skills training has developed a whole lot in recent years and studies have shown it can be very effective in keeping a marriage together.
O'BRIEN: Bottom line, as you look ahead toward the state of marriage, if you will, in this country, are you an optimist or a pessimist? CROUCH: I'm an optimist. I think it's a very long-term social change that we are aiming at in reducing divorce and strengthening and not just preserving, but improving marriages. But I think the tide has turned.
O'BRIEN: John Crouch is a divorce attorney. He's also with a group called Americans for Divorce Reform. He joins us from Washington. Thanks for being with us on the program, sir.
CROUCH: Thank you.
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