Reasons of divorce and support to the family: women’s perspective
Review
The article analyzes the main causes of divorce on the basis of subjective experiences of divorced women. Any divorce is associated with a loss, because one loses a person with
whom they have probably spent a large part of their life. Divorce is related to one’s social status, environment and changes in psychological state. Although the number of marriages tends to increase annually, the number of divorces is also increasing. The article aims to examine the experiences that might lead to divorce. The method of qualitative research was chosen in order to reveal and analyse the women’s experiences. Half-structured interviews were used as the means to gather the data. The method of qualitative content
analysis was employed in order to analyze the data. 6 women who got divorced between 2 and 10 years ago participated in the research. The qualitative research has shown that the conditions leading to the divorce may appear even before marriage, as spouses bring their ineffective behavioural patterns into a new family. Experiences that led to the
divorce for the research participants were: dysfunctional or incomplete primary family; ineffective learned ways of conflict management, parental pressure to create a family or personal unpreparedness for marriage. These conditions may also appear during the marriage, when the skills to communicate or the quality of emotional connection inside the family
are poor. Although infidelity, violence or alcoholism are often the officially named grounds for divorce, it is also the consequence of unbalanced relationship of the spouses.
Keywords: marriage, divorce, divorce reasons, experiences of women.