ABSTRACT
There is an increasing amount of academic and clinical research which seeks to describe the aspects and stages of the divorce process from various theoretical perspectives. On the one hand there are those who view the social processes of divorce, while on the other there are those who seek to describe the psychological process, either from the experience of the individual, the couple or the children, or from that of the whole family. When marital breakdown results in divorce, as is often the case, then the process also crosses the somewhat amorphous boundary which divides the private sorrows (Wright Mills 1959) which lie within the family and those of divorce as a public issue, and one which may come under the purview of the civil (or private) law as it relates to the family. One of the earliest researchers described a stage-theory approach to divorce, distinguishing the six stations of divorce-the emotional (two stages), the legal, economic, coparental, community (networks of friends, neighbours, schools and so on) and ultimately, the psychic divorce (Bohannon 1970)—and this has formed the basis of much subsequent work. Among those who consider divorce as a social process are two sociologists, Hart (1976) and Vaughan (1987) one of whom describes the process from the perspective of the individual and the other from that of the couple. Hart (whose work has already been referred to in Chapter 2, ‘Divorce and
remarriage as additional stages of the family life cycle’, page 44) considered marital breakdown and divorce as an unstructured and unscheduled status passage in which an important aspect of social identity is being changed, and that this is one for which the individual is ill prepared, lacks role support, and (at the time of her research) transgressed social norms, although society is now more tolerant of divorce. Vaughan researched the underlying patterns which lie beneath disintegrating partnerships and, while clearly introducing ideas drawn from stage theory, also describes the uncoupling process in interactional terms. Her work shows clearly how the private troubles of the partners eventually become a public issue.
