Interview 2 adults (this could be both of your parents) and 2 peers (two people who are in their 20‘s) about their attitudes towards divorce and marriage. Specifically, you should try to identify the ways in which their attitudes about or experiences of marriage and intimate relationships reflect institutional, companionate, or individualist values. Place each of your subjects in some kind of historical or cultural context (i.e. explain why you think they hold these values). In a tactful way, you should ask about what they think has helped them be successful in their relationships, or what they think has hindered them in their relationships. You should make an effort to include other information from the class, in terms of how people communicate, how they understand the nature of love relationships, how children impact relationships, to further analyze the interviews.
Possible questions you could ask in your interview include:
• what were/are important characteristics about their mate when they were/are courting • how did they go about dating
• how they decided or will decide to get married – at what age, at what expense
• what they think the meaning or purpose of marriage is
• under what circumstances they think divorce makes sense or is advisable
• whether they think that divorce culture has affected their relationship in positive or negative ways
• what are their approaches to conflict, conflict resolution, communication
• If they have divorced, and have children, what they saw as the pros and cons of the divorce on their children

• If they are children of divorce, what were the pros and cons for them of their parents divorce.
• If they are children of divorce, how has their parents divorce affected their ideas about their own intimate relationships
A few strategies for writing this paper
1) Begin your interviews with a hypothesis – i.e. formulate your own ideas about marriage and divorce and what you expect people to say – and then describe whether your expectations were met, or how you were surprised by what people said
2) Identify one or two aspects about love and marriage that you yourself wonder about, or are confused about. Put another way, formulate and write down 1 or 2 organizing questions and then organize your interviews and your writing around these questions. I.e. “Is looking for your soul mate the best approach” – use your interviews to answer this question.
3) Be open to surprise – write about what aspects of your interviews really surprised you
4) Make sense of your own family life – if you want, use this paper as a way to gain a
more intellectual understanding of what happened in your own parent’s relationship
