Have Human Relationships Become Worse?

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(Edited)

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Introduction

I've been reading commentary on the worsening quality of human relationships. Some people think the distractions of modern life have made human relationships, intimate relationships in particular, worse than they used to be in past decades.

This is a hard question to answer because we all tend to be biased observers and because there are so many factors influencing something as inherently hard to judge as the quality of human relationships.

I'm going to discuss the question in this post.

How to measure the quality of relationships?

It's possible to try and quantify relationship quality in many ways. One way is to look at the frequency of reported abuse in relationships. That may be difficult as reporting criteria have changed. For instance, raping ones own wife was legal in Finland until 1994. Corporal discipline in homes was made illegal in 1984. Without knowing any stats the fact that these things used to be legal in the first place speaks volumes. Hitting your children to punish them for bad behavior has been shown to work less well than other methods.

When I was in primary school, I remember witnessing and being involved in physical fighting more frequently than my daughter has reported witnessing them when she was in primary school. Between 2009 and 2019, physical fighting among children aged 9 to 12 has gone down significantly according to this American statistics. What I've heard from many sources is that Finnish youth has fewer behavioral problems in general than in past decades. It should be added that researchers say that this, like many other social statistics, has been polarized. While the majority is doing better than ever, a small minority has more problems than before.

It's difficult to get a complete picture because reporting may have changed.

What about people divorcing more frequently these days?

When a society changes from a traditional one into a modern one, divorces typically become much more likely but they tend to plateau. It is not clear that people used to divorce less frequently owing to better relationship skills in the past. Many more marriages in the past were forced in the sense that owing to low female participation in working life outside the home, many women had to tolerate a husband they would have left had they more opportunities to earn a living on their own.

Conclusion

While there are in fact more distractions readily available these days competing for our attention and thus potentially degrading the quality of our relationships, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that relationship quality was less of a consideration in the first place only a generation or two ago. More people were forced to tolerate abuse from their spouses than now. Violence was more commonplace in and outside of intimate relationships. Work against violence and abuse in relationships in the legal and the social welfare systems has borne fruit. General attitudes toward domestic violence and abuse in various forms are less tolerant these days. Another significant factor is that alcohol abuse in developed countries is less prevalent now than many decades ago.



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