Answer to Question 1
The students should assert that the American family has changed due to several factors. Women are marrying later and having smaller numbers of children. Family size has declined, due to divorce, delaying children or alternative lifestyles. Both parents tend to work, thus creating role conflicts between work and family obligations. The numbers of single female head of households increased dramatically in the past 40 years. Finally, the percentage of women working has increased.
Answer to Question 2
Psychologist Steven Duck's (1982; 1984 ) model of relationship deterioration emphasizes both intrapersonal dynamics, which focus on the individual's intellectual and emotional role in the relationship, and interpersonal dynamics, which focus on how spouses interact. Rather than focus on the end of a relationship as simply a process of a decline in intimacy (or the de-escalation of intimacy), Duck's model notes 5 phases of breakdown in the couple's relationship.
The dyadic breakdown refers to the breakdown of the couple's established relational patterns. During this first phase of decline, couples cannot identify precisely what is wrong with the relationship, yet they begin to sense that something is wrong.
According to Duck, the second phase of relationship deterioration is the intrapsychic phase, or individual cognition, which refers to the point at which couples begin to focus on those aspects of the relationship with which they are dissatisfied or disappointed; however, these feelings of distress are rarely mutual. The feelings of discontent are initially experienced as nagging thoughts that ebb and flow in strength, or may begin as feelings of depression (Anderson and Sabatelli, 2003 ).
The dyadic phase occurs when couples discuss their dissatisfaction with their marriage and attempt to either find a resolution or their intent to end the relationship.
Not all couples enter into discussions, however. Some simply become emotionally divorced, emotionally withdrawing from one another or from their marriage (Bowen, 1978 ). Others still may choose to remain in a marriage with high levels of conflict, distress, and dissatisfaction.
Once a couple decides that the relationship will be terminated, they then decide, either individually or jointly, how they will disclose the news of their breakup to family and friends. According to Duck, this public announcement constitutes the social phase of relationship deterioration. This is a time of much insecurity and imbalance within the family system, particularly for the spouse who did not initiate the divorce, as well as for the children.
Whenever we lose someone we love, we need a proper way to say goodbye. According to Duck (1992 ), the death of a marriage is no exception. In the grave dressing phase of relationship end, the couple must come to terms with the breakdown/breakup of the marriage. This part of the process is similar to dealing with the death of a loved one and couples who divorce begin to piece together a rational, logical explanation that explains why the marriage died. According to Duck, the grave dressing extends the account making that couples engaged in during the social phase of relationship deterioration. But more importantly, grave dressing allows the dissolved couple to cope with the feelings that so often accompany divorce, such as depression, loneliness, guilt, remorse, confusion, and grief.
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