Comparative Study On Divorce Between China And America

Divorce is an unfortunate thing in traditional Chinese eyes. However, under the economic globalization, China is in the social transformation period and China’s divorce rate has risen continuously even seven times and more than five thousand family per day broke up, which caused public fears. But the United States, as a high divorce rate country, began to reduce in divorce rate nowadays. Therefore, this thesis mainly predicts the trends of the Chinese divorce situation, finds and learns some measures to reduce divorce rate and build a healthy marriage.In aboard, for the causes of the divorce rate rising, foreign scholars have researched from multiple angles, and mainly formed five views:first is the economic factor; second is the family system factor; third is the sex proportion factor; forth is the social integration factor; fifth is the cultural factor. In China, in the attitude toward divorce, scholars basically form the two views:first are the views of Radicals. Li Yinhe is the representative. He thinks that divorce is a private thing. But Liu Dalin thinks that if the divorce harms the social interests and stable, society should intervene. Main theory of thesis is the social exchange theory. The focus of social exchange theory is explaining the behaviors of people by investigating the relationship of the costs and profits of the people in social interactions. Interpersonal social interaction process can be seen as an exchange between at least two people, whether this process is tangible or intangible. Homans is the founder of this theory. Blan further developed this theory.In this paper, through reviewing the three stages of divorce in the United States and four divorce climaxes after new China, we can understand the different divorce history of two countries and analysis the different characteistics. Then discussing the social transformation bring the changes to people’s marriage from the political, economic and cultural aspects in China; and discussing declining reasons of the divorce rate from the political, economic, legal aspects in America. China is a traditional country and autonomy of women in marriage is very low in the old days. With the transformation of society, the improvement of their status, more and more tolerant to divorce and simplifying divorce formalities has made many people free from the unfortunate marriage to find their true happiness. The United States was supposed to a country with fairly high divorce rate. Just as Goode said, the western culture itself brought the highest divorce rate in the history. But now researchers think that the American ways of life is gradually changing to the Swedish people, because the premarital cohabitation people increase. Owing to the economic crisis, America’s unemployment rate increase. Divorce cost is too high and divorce needs too long which many people cannot afford so that many people think divocing is quite a trouble.According to the social exchange theory, human is rational, interaction among people is a mutually beneficial relationship. So does conjugal relation. They always hope to obtain the biggest returns with the smallest input. With the further development of transformation, Chinese divorce rate in a long time will increase slowly; divorce rate will be a more substantial upgrade than the city divorce rate; the proportion of women who offered to divorce still has a certain increase space; the reasons of the divorce will be more diversified. In America, the divorce rate will reduce in recent years. But cohabitation will not instead of the marriage. To long and stable marriages, we can’t just wait because it will cause a series of social problems. We should not only take pains in the external environment, but also find countermeasures in the internal cause divorce.