Sociology 2235 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Child Custody, Longitudinal Study, Outlast
23 Jul 2012
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Document Summary
Divorce is an experience that is both very individual and yet carried similarities across cases: a first divorce is, at the very least, a marking event in a person"s life. Divorce is a legal institution whose function is to separate spouses who can no longer live together. However, it carried implications for the life course of adults and children alike. In previous centuries, single-parent families were a common occurrence. Until the second world war, the death of a spouse remained the leading cause of family disruption, at which point it was surpassed by divorce. It was not until 1968 that canada enacted its first unified federal divorce act, which was followed by the more liberal or no fault act of 1985. Although divorce rates have not increased recently in canada, the number of divorced persons is nevertheless increasing with population growth. In 2007, there were 972,183 divorced women and 712,531 divorced men in the population.
