The Divorce-Generating Atmosphere of America

We have already quoted Newsweek as saying that the American woman gives preference to merry-making over the stability of domestic life. Now let us take a step forward and see why she has adopted such an attitude. It is certain that this attitude is not natural and inherent. It has certain social reasons behind it. It is the American atmosphere which has given this mentality to the American woman. Some Westerners are working hard to push the woman of the East to the way the American women have gone. If they succeed, the fate of the Eastern woman and the Eastern family will not be different from that of the American woman and the American family.

A prominent French daily writes that in more than 200 restaurants and cabaret houses in California waitresses work in topless outfits. The topless swimming costume has been recognised as the working-dress in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the city of New York there are many cinema halls which show only sexy films and the nude pictures of women can be seen displayed in front of their entrances. The names of sexy films are of this kind: "The men who swap their wives", "The girls who are immoral", 'The dress which does not hide anything". ~ the libraries there are very few fiction books which do not bear a nude photo of a woman on their covers. Even the classical books are no exception. Such titles as "Sexual Behaviour of American Husbands", "Sexual Behaviour of a Man of the West", ' Sexual Behaviour of Young Men Below 20", "New Sexual Methods Based on the Latest Information", are very common. The writer of the article in the French daily asks with surprise and apprehension: "Whither America?"

In such an atmosphere, if the American woman has lost her balance and gives preference to pleasure-seeking over faithfulness to her husband and family she is not to blame. It is the social atmosphere which has struck at the very root of the sacred family system.

It is surprising that the leaders of our age give, on the one hand, an impetus to the causes of divorce and the disintegration of family life and, on the other, raise a hue and cry that the rate of divorce has gone up so high. This is just like putting a man to sweep a chimney and then asking him not to stain his clothes.

Adapted from the book: "Woman and Her Rights" by: "Shahid Murtaza Mutahhari"