Abstract:
The analyze the processes of early marriages and “marriage failures”, the reasons why it happens in our modern world are extremely important not only for Russia but for the whole world in general. The scope of my essay is to present the main arguments on why divorces happen, what are the main theories, sociologists’ views, and a major part of it will be about a very interesting phenomenon also called as the “Russian Marriage Paradox”. My essay includes some data from federal agencies, theories of sociologists, and some surveys of the OECD Family Data Base. Moreover, my thoughts would be based on a survey conducted by the VTsIOM in 130 different cities of Russia and my own survey among young people. The material allowed us to see the actual situation in Russia considering the divorces and marriages, we saw that even if this country has many things to change to reach the lower divorce rate, but still it is moving to the Western countries and changing its traditions. As the Government would try to change the situation by introducing some norms considering the family, it would be possible to make the family ties stronger in our country.
Keywords: marriage, family, couple, divorce, country
1. Introduction
Family and marriage have always been important aspects while analyzing the relations between people, as the family is the most primitive institution in society which is strongly connected with values, economic issues, and the society in general.
In this essay, I not going to stress my attention on family and its role in the society, I am going to look specifically at the marriages, which, of course, have historically been linked with families. It all comes from people’s attitude towards the family in each country and how it actually was individually organized in the family, with their parents. It cannot be denied that what the children see between their parents, remains in his memory, and in the future, there is a big chance that he/ she will act in the same way.
We cannot deny the fact that moving from one country to another we will see absolutely different opinions on such issues as family and marriages. If we take, for example, Italy, we will notice the tendency to marry late and to give birth to children also late. While in the Maldives, for example, and in Russia, the picture is the opposite. This is one more aspect that is important to cover and which is interesting to analyze: “The Russian Marriage Paradox”, which is basically the absolutely diverse picture if again considering the example of Italy: marring and giving birth early, but, on the other hand, having a ½ possibility to divorce. As statistics show us, in 2017, there were registered more than 1 million marriages, while more than 600 thousand families broke. Our country is on the 2nd place by the highest rate in the world, and for this reason, sociologists continue to analyze this phenomenon, as the case of Russia is one of the most interesting in the world. Why does this happen? What is so special in the case with Russia? And how could it be solved?
The essay is organized as follows. In Section 2, we are going to look at the main concepts which are necessary to better understand the topic and we will look at the theories and arguments regarding the specific case of Russia in the “marriage” aspect. Then, in Section 3, it is essential to analyze the data and surveys regarding our theme. Section 4 and 5 will be about our conclusions and discussions on the topic.
2. Conceptual framework
Let now introduce some terms which would be useful for analyzing the topic. First of all, it is important to give a definition of the word “marriage”, which is used in Sociology. Of course, every individual, culture, and society have its own idea of the word “marriage”. As believed by many sociologists, a marriage is a social and legal contract between two individuals (a man and a woman) traditionally based on a romantic and sexual relationship, with its rights and obligations between spouses. As said before, there is no specific definition of this word, as “marriage” could be considered in an absolutely different way in other countries. For example, in some countries, it is an absolutely normal process that more than two people involved in a marriage (polygamy), or people of the same sex could be married. Such things could be not understandable in the Russian mentality, but it would be normal for a person living in the other part of the world.
Another concept that would be mentioned quite often in this essay is the word “divorce”. How do sociologists actually understand it? Divorce is the legal dissolution of a previously granted marriage. Divorce is considered one of the major problems in different countries of the world such as Russia, United States and etc. Still, even if we live in the 21st century, there is no concrete reason for divorces, and no sociologist actually gave the “right” way not to end up divorced, because the relationships between people are so difficult as an endless labyrinth where there is an entrance, but no exit.
What about the case of Russia? As stated before, the case of Russia is very interesting as we see the picture of two phenomena which are, if it can be said in this way, have become a part of the Russia mentality, which in a way differs from the situation in other of the world. For many decades, it was common among Russians to play the wedding at an early age. How early? Many young men and women get married at the age of approximately 18-20 years while studying in the university.
Why this actually happens? It is all about the Russian tradition, according to which a young woman had to get married as early as possible. In Ancient Russia, a 15-year old girl was considered to be mature enough to marry and raise children. Moreover, in the Russian society still exists the norm that a woman should get married before her 30s, if no, then she would never find anyone and will remain alone. Of course, this perception is absolutely wrong, but as time passes, we could still see this belief among young women in our country. On the other hand, it is estimated that the situation is moving to the right way, as there is now a tendency for young people to firstly get a good education and work, and only then to think about planning a family. Despite this, the marriage age in Russia is still lower if considering other countries of the world.
What about the divorces in Russia? Why there are so many of them? Every person and couple has its own reasons, but we are going to analyze the most frequent of them. The first and the simplest answer, as I believe, is the fact that you can get divorced in Russia very easily and it is a really fast procedure. As stated by the Russian Beyond Newspaper: “Pay a fee, wait for a month, get a paper- and you are good”. So, there is no big process of papers which we could find, for example, in Switzerland where it is a long procedure of minimum 2 years. Secondly, it is important to be said that a few decades ago, women could not see their life without a husband and without taking care of her children, the man was like the dominator in the family. Now the situation has changed a lot. Many women live their life without a husband, they work and they have the ability to sustain themselves, so, if having a conflict with her partner, many women prefer to get divorced, as it is not a difficult procedure for them. Thirdly, it is believed that alcoholism and cheating on your partner are also reasons for so many divorces in our country, and it is also an important reason that has to be taken into consideration.
Of course, if we consider the case of Moscow and Saint Petersburg it is important to be said that the marriage and divorce culture is becoming more westernized, while in province women still continue to go in accordance with the tradition.
3. Data description
In this chapter, we are going to present and analyze some data and statistics about the issue with marriages and divorce in the Russian Federation. It is estimated that in 2017 the number of divorces per 1000 people was 829. According to the OECD Family Data Base (2012), we could see the actual distribution of divorces by the duration of marriages. It is estimated that almost half of the marriages end in a 4-year time. This is a dramatic data if comparing to other countries. If taking the example of Italy, we could see that almost no marriages end in a 4-year time. And this happens because, as already mentioned before, Russians tend to get married extremely early, while Italians prefer to wait for many years before coming to the idea to get married.
(Distribution of divorces by the duration of the marriage, 2012 (OECD Family Database) https://www.oecd.org/els/family/)
While analyzing different researchers on the main ideas of sociologists regarding divorces, we could see that there are actually many different theories based on which we could analyze the marriages and divorces. One of them is called the Conflict Theory (Schaefer, 2008). The main concepts of this theory are tensions and inequality between people. Basically, this theory views our society “as an arena of disparity that generates conflict and change”. If we look at the divorces in the perspective of the Conflict Theory, it is estimated that it is all about the competition for resources and power within the marriage where both sides cannot come to an agreement.
This is about the divorces in general but let’s come back to the main topic: the Russian Marriage Paradox. We saw the main reasons for it, the average number of them a year and the comparison with the other country. But what about the actual situation now and the changes that occurred during the last 10 years? As statistics from the Russian’s Social Registry Office show, ten years ago every third marriage in Russia ended in divorce; nowadays, it is every second. In 2012, about 650,000 couples divorced, while approximately 1,213,000 couples got married. According to the United Nations, in 2012, Russia was on the 1st place in the numbers of divorces.
(http://divorceinrussia.com/russian-divorce-statistics/)
A survey by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) was conducted in 130 different cities of the Russian Federation showed that 24 percent of people divorced because of the infidelity towards their partner, while 21 percent connected their divorce with poverty and 19 percent because of the inability to compromise. The rest of people named other social reasons for it. Another issue which showed up in the survey is that a significant number of Russian couples got divorced after 20-30 years of their marriage. For me, it is understandable why some young couples after 1-2 years decide to split up, but it seems extremely strange to me that after sharing everything for so many years there is a chance that something would go wrong in a couple. On the other hand, sociologists explain this situation in the way that after a couple has grown-up kids, they see no point in continuing to be a family, a couple. “When children grow up, parents lose their common field of action,” said Kirill Khromov, Head of the Crossroads Psychological Center. “It looks like the end of a joint project—the objectives have been achieved, and they fail to find new ones. There are couples who can weather all kinds of storms because they still enjoy each other’s company. But most often, children are the only thing that keeps couples together.”
I also tried to conduct a survey among students (aged 17-22) and the only question that I asked was: “What do you believe is the main reason for so many divorces in Russia?” The answers were very different, every person tried to give a few reasons that they believe are the most important. Here are a few answers which I received:
Student A: “Nowadays, Marriage and Family aren’t the mechanisms for surviving anymore, it is something else, but most people do not really understand what it is about. People stopped seeing marriage as an important aspect of their life.”
Student B: “Most marriages in our country happen because of the pregnancy. In Russia, if you are not married, you could have many problems in giving birth and raising of the child. It is much easier to get married, and when the child grows up a little bit, to get divorced.”
Student C: “I believe it is about egoism of the people and their inability to compromise. And it is all about our Russian mentality.”
4. Discussion and Results regarding the topic
As looking at our discussion in the essay, it is important to be said that still, the family in Russia is a significant aspect of most people even if in some regions of the country the family ties are not as strong as in other countries of the world. There are still no concrete answers to the question “what really causes so many divorces in our country?’, but certainly, Russia is an interesting example in the marriage and divorce aspects. It unites in itself both the young marriages, which after many decades have become a part of the Russian tradition, and the high rate of divorces. As we already mentioned above, many sociologists, analyzing the specific example of Russia, believe that the high divorce rate is directly connected with the young age of the couple and their desire to make a family when they are still too young. Of course, it is not the only reason but it is one of the most important features of Russian society. The Government tries to help young adults by giving some privileges as money for a small kid, some facilities, but it is still not enough to change this difficult problem in our country. On the other hand, it is believed that the “Russian Marriage Paradox” is becoming not as present in the Russian society as before. Russia is slowly becoming more Westernized and the traditions are changing. So, it will be not a surprise if in 5-10 years the divorce and marriage rate would change in the right direction.
5. Conclusion
In this essay, we tried to give some idea of what actually is marriage, divorce, how they affect our society, what are the main theories, and, moreover, we examined that actually is the “Russian Marriage Paradox”. Moreover, I conducted a survey among people of my age and represented my results by giving a few quotes of the respondents.
It is a serious topic which takes into consideration many people not only of Russia but of the whole world. It is extremely important that we analyze these topics and try to find solutions to minimize the divorce rate in the countries. To do this, it is needed that the Government in all ways tries to support couples no matter what, to make the family ties stronger, as the divorce affects not only the couple themselves but their children and people around.