Ubaiduloeva Zarrina

English 1101, Prof. Scanlan

Date: 04/06/2021

Divorce in the different cultures.

1st Annotated Bibliography

Huang, Wei‐Jen. “An Asian Perspective on Relationship and Marriage Education.” Family Process” vol. 44, no. 2, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, pp. 161–73, doi:10.1111/j.1545-5300.2005.00051.x.

The author of the article “An Asian Perspective on Relationship and Marriage Education” Wei-Jen Huang is the Chinese clinical psychologist who was born and raised in Taiwan, and later trained and based in United States.

According to the article “An Asian Perspective on Relationship and Marriage Education” which was written by Wei-Jen Huang (2005), author wants to point out the general trends in the institution of marriage, divorce rate and couple relationship education among Asians in China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and India.The author asserts that, “Thirty years ago divorce was very rare in most Asian countries. However, in recent years, the pattern of marriage and divorce has changed dramatically in many parts of Asia.” Moreover, Wei-Jen Huang reports that, the divorce rate in some Asia countries, has increased quite dramatically (for example: Korea, Japan, and Taiwan), while in others, divorce rates have increased more gradually (for example: India). On the other hand, in Malaysia, the Muslim divorce rate has actually decreased in the last 2 years. Also, this article implies some key influences on divorce across Asian countries.

The first influence is “Rapid economic growth, urbanization, and the changing cultural norms in Asian societies.”  Nowadays, the modern society is more focused on a carrier advancement and wealth, which leads to negative impact on both quality and stability of marital relationship. priority. The second influence is “Enhanced choice through educational/employment opportunities for Asian women.” In modern society, women in Asia have become more educated and economically independent, they have more choice to divorce with the partner who abuse them and make relationship in an unacceptable way. Third, “The loosening of social control over marriage.” Fourth, “The divorce laws in most Asian countries have become more lenient” Fifth, “The growing individualism”. The last of is “The rise of ‘‘romantic love’’ and the gradual decline of arranged marriages.” The first contribution is to stop the arranged marriages. The second is to rise the education level which leads to decrease of divorce level.

In conclusion, author Wei-Jen Huang strongly believes that high-quality marital education, therapy, and supervision are needed in all Asian nations in order to prevent divorces. In addition, author asserts, in order to build healthy marriage, people must address values and concepts such as commitment, forgiveness, responsibility, self-reflection, sacrifices.

In my opinion, Wei-Jen Huang’s article is a good beginning point for preventing divorces in Asia countries, because it has good research which is based on his own experience of conducting information, statistics and reliable sources.

Derived on Wei-Jen Huang’s experience, who was studied in the United States and working as a clinical psychologist, he is highly credible. Huang’s style of writing is academic and his purpose to inform reader about trends of marriage and rising of divorces in Asia countries. Moreover, the genre of the article is a peer reviewed journal. I believe that author chose that genre because he is working as a psychologist and he conducted a lot of research while he was working with patients. I think that, Huang’s article is a good for the intended audience who is interested in marriage education and divorce rate in Asia culture.

“Given the data on the negative effects of marital conflict and divorce (Markman &Halford, 2005) and the increasing divorce rate in various parts of Asia, we can start to imagine the pain and distress experienced by Asian family members. As marital disruption continues to increase, more and more Asians will be motivated to seek help, both in terms of therapy and prevention.” I think that, this quote is very helpful and informative because author tried to research a lot and show that divorce rate is increasing in Asia countries therefore, people should ask for help in terms of therapy and prevention.