Marriage Contracts?

I read an article on the New York Times website called "Till Death, or 20 Years, Do Us Part."  The article was about whether or not a couple, who wants to get married, should make a 20 year marriage contract that limits their marriage to a certain amount of years and then call it quits.  The author, Matt Richtel, explains why people are getting divorced in a few simple reasons: we, Americans, are living longer, we are less inclined to the religious aspect of marriage, and technology makes it very easy for a spouse to cheat.  Because divorce is so high in the U.S., Richtel wanted various professionals' views about marriage contracts and if couples should start making deadlines for their marriages.  A divorce lawyer said that through his experience, he has seen many divorces result from  the couple becoming parents, focusing on the kids, their work, then they soon grow apart, and they can't find each other after that.  The divorce isn't only tough on the couple, but also on the child; it can devastate them and ruin the child for life. The lawyer believes that the contract wouldn't change the post-divorce emotions a child feels unless it created a "cultural sense that divorce is part of life." If divorce was part of the culture, it wouldn't necessarily take as big of a toll on the child. Another professional stated that a contract wouldn't form happier marriages. She suggested that every 5 years, a married couple should redo their vows to reflect on what they have learned through the times when their marriage was most vulnerable. A professor of sociology shared her thoughts on the contract.  She doesn't think a contract would help, rather, she thinks that people should get rid of all of the craziness and hype that people put on weddings because that's what the couple likes and build their wants to get married on: a fantasy world.

This article kind of made me laugh at points: why would a couple put a limit on their marriage? To me, that's saying that you know that the marriage is going to fail... so why get married if you think it's not going to last? Though I didn't agree with the author's idea of how to fix marriages, I did like what some of the professionals had to say.  For example, I thought that what the lawyer said about divorce being apart of the culture was interesting. I never really thought about that detail. What if divorce was part of the culture? Would divorce have less of an effect on children if it was a "social norm" for parents to get divorced? Thankfully, my parents divorce wasn't very rough on me because I was so young, but I was still upset about it.  I think that if divorce was part of our culture at that time, I still would have been upset about the divorce because my family was not a whole. Maybe if it actually was a norm back then I would feel differently about it now and think it's no big deal. I was really glad I came across this article because it put ideas into my head about how divorce can be prevented and if any of the ideas would actually work.