Dissolving Wedlock

`... readable, multidisciplinary analysis ... will be of interest to all concerned with the welfare of the individual of the family.' - Institute of Health Education`Should be required reading for those people who wish to set themselves up as arbiters of others' sexual and marital behaviour...' - Claire Rayner, The Sunday Times

• Preface Introduction Part I Before Civil Divorce 1. Ecclesiastical influence and jurisdiction in matrimonial matters 2. Decline of the ecclesiastical courts 3. Parliamentary divorce 4. The coming of judicial divorce Part II Divorce or Separation 5. Constraints of poverty and gender 6. Between the Wars 7. From matrimonial offence to irretrievable breakdown Part III Marriage Patterns in the Twentieth Century 8. Changing family patterns 9. The resort to divorce: the social evidence 10. The reconstituted family Part IV Marriage Breakdown Today 11. Divorce: the legal evidence 12. Family breakdown, protection and the law 13. Accounting for family support 14. Marriage breakdown in the 1990s Notes Bibliography Name index Subject index