10 Changing Family Roles and Marital Instability

Under socialism divorce plays a dual role in relation to marriage. If it is directed against survivals of the past in marital relations, against the exploitation and moral humiliation of one of the spouses, it can be a means of morally elevating matrimony, an assertion of the equality of men and women; but it can also be the antithesis of matrimony if it is a result of those survivals, the ethical immaturity of the spouses, and a rejection by them in their behavior of what underlies the social requirement for the institutionalization of marital relations: mutual obligations, duty, responsibility for children. Socialist society upholds the former function of divorce and places no obstacles to the dissolution of marriage when it is really necessary, but it tries to prevent divorces that are destructive with respect to the very institution of the family and its social role.