Alarmingly enough, divorce and separate living have almost doubled in the country over the past one decade. A Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics report has depicted a pathetic picture regarding the post-married life of Bangladeshi citizens that the crude rate of divorce was 1.1 per one thousand people in 2016 which was merely 0.6 back in 2006. On the other hand, the rate of separate living reached 0.6, up from 0.2 during the same period of time. The study also notes that, in seven out of 10 applications it was the wives who sought divorce. An increasing rate of divorces and living-apart implies that the sweet conjugal relations between two spouses are somehow disturbed.
Maybe it is because of differences in men-women pre-marriage and post-marriage understandings. But psychologists and gender experts have opined that divorce stems from losing family bonding and values, spouse's extra-marital affairs, dwelling in the virtual world fantasies -- that is social media, husband's failure in providing subsistence, immoral practices, incurable diseases, physical assault, dowry, premature marriage, infertility and polygamy and so on like these.
But massive empowerment and education that have enabled women to become more conscious than ever about their rights and attain economic solvency are two most important players in this regard. A financially able and independent woman has the power to take decisions on her own and protest the oppressing behaviour of her husband. The BBS report well justifies this while mentioning that divorce rate among educated and affluent women is far higher than that of among the little-educated or uneducated.
Men, as a matter of fact, need to change their medieval attitude that women are supposed to be only suppressed. A marital relationship lasts as long as both the spouses enjoy each other's companionship which again extremely depends on sharing duties and enjoying rights on an equal manner. There is no alternative to realising the importance of a strong family bonding. For separation and divorce can affect children, whom they have brought to life, and deter a smooth development of their mentality, parents should become more dutiful and caring in protecting and maintaining a harmonious conjugal relationship between them. For erosion in familial commitment can eventually lead to total indiscipline in society.