A second chance to those who deserve it

Ranier Fsadni gave us a well-argued piece on the emotionally charged question of divorce but it was too theoretical and detached from reality (Divorce: Beyond The Soundbites, June 25). A fundamental flaw is that he (like so many others) fails to distinguish, in the first place, between irrevocable marital breakdown and the subsequent divorce (or legal separation). These are not at all the same. Quite simply, marital breakdown (often long-drawn and distressing to all concerned) precedes divorce. Thus, much of what he has to say about linking divorce to liberty or freedom (positive, negative), or "empowered freedom from institutional interference", freedom to pursue happiness and so on, is all very well but it does not address the central issue that the forces at work in marital breakdown completely overshadow any such considerations.

His assertion that there is "clear tested evidence" that introduction of divorce laws "contributes to higher rates of marital breakdown" is also disputable. First of all, in what way can the evidence he quotes be "tested"? The numbers may indeed be verifiable but surely not the statistical significance of the correlation (if any) between the introduction of divorce and an increase in marital breakdown. Using this "evidence" as an argument against the introduction of divorce ignores the fact that, though two phenomena may occur in a parallel fashion or be temporally related, they need not necessarily be causally linked. In order to verify a causal, rather than a coincidental, link one needs, at the very least, to have a control group. Now, one can argue equally that Malta (no divorce) does provide exactly such a control group. In Malta's case marital breakdown and legal separations increased phenomenally, possibly at the same rate as those quoted in the article, in spite of the absence of divorce in this country. This would therefore suggest that the introduction of divorce laws would not necessarily contribute to higher rates of marital breakdown in a country where legal separation is readily available.

While there are admittedly many California-style divorces, usually among the wealthy, which are taken frivolously, the emotional toll of marital breakdowns in average human beings is almost invariably devastating to at least one partner - and no amount of theoretical consideration or statistics can address this.

Thus discussion of the differential effects on "partner dissolution" of a host of self-evident factors such as welfare set-up, risk of poverty, gain or loss of liberty or freedom, whether or not partner dissolution is socially or financially calamitous and so on - though perfectly valid in themselves - is quite beside the point because it ignores the stark truth that the majority of victims of marital breakdown do not have the luxury of asking themselves the question "Given the conditions in my country, does it pay me to divorce"? Such theoretical considerations are far away from the minds of the casualties of marital breakdown who are often heard to comment that they would sooner live in a pigsty than continue in the broken-down relationship - or words to that effect. It is as simple as that. The availability or otherwise of divorce and a host of other theoretical factors rarely enters into the equation for separating couples, and allowing divorce is merely a matter of not denying a second chance to those who deserve it.