RIYADH: A study on divorce rates and their effect on Saudi society has warned of a rising tide of marriage break-ups, particularly in recently-wed couples, and calls for “soon-to-be-wed couples to be trained in taking responsibility”. According to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Arabic daily, the study conducted by researcher Salman Al-Umri states that in the last 19 years half a million Saudi couples have filed for divorce. Fifty percent of divorcees married between the ages of 24 and 28, according to figures in the study, and 18 percent of divorces involved couples aged between 18 and 23. The study proposes a “fund for divorced women” to give them professional training to turn them into “producers, not consumers”, with classes in skills such as sewing and embroidery, typing and secretarial work, business management, traditional national industries, and home economics. Al-Umri further proposes greater efforts for the provision of a “dignified life” for the children from broken homes by opening childcare centers and kindergartens so that they do not become “minors who break the principles and rules of society or codes of proper conduct”. The study, which questioned 330 divorcees made up of 80 males and 250 females, put the divorce rate in Saudi Arabia at 23 percent, a figure described as “worryingly high”. It noted that divorce rates were higher in higher income brackets, something it attributes to the financial ability for males to take more than one wife, which “might be one of the causes of divorce”.
