Jeffrey Guterman  

Verbatim transcript of 1989 interview of Albert Ellis conducted by Jeffrey Guterman

Guterman: The breakup of the family in the 20^th century.

Ellis: Yeah. What about it?

Guterman: Why?

Ellis: Why did it break up?

Guterman: Yeah.

Ellis: First of all, it hasn’t. The family is nauseatingly unbroken.

Guterman: Oh my God. That’s fantastic.

Ellis: Like I just said.

Guterman: Why?

Ellis: You support members of your family when they’re crooks, when they’re murderers, etcetera, and members of other families, you’re prejudiced against very often.

Guterman: I was thinking more in terms of, first, the nuclear family, I mean the extended family and then the nuclear family and now what seems to be the broken family, single parent families…

Ellis: Yeah, but part of that is good because people are not staying together when they hate each other.

Guterman: What do you attribute to the increasing divorce rate in the past 30 years, 50 years?

Ellis: Well, people are now, there are economic reasons, like they are now more mobile, and things like that. In the old days you couldn’t get a divorce, especially if you had four or five children. It was too expensive. Now, if you have one child, or two children, or no children, it’s much easier. So, there are economic, but there are also just more liberal ideas. We’ve given up the idea that once you marry, you have to stay married forever.

Guterman: So this goes back to what you were saying. Liberalized thinking. Do you see the increase in divorce as a good thing?

Ellis: Some of it is and some of it is bad. Some of it is bad because people marry foolishly. They marry very young very often. And they marry in their teens, even. Those marriages are not likely to be made on good grounds. Those divorces are bad because the marriages were bad. But some of it is good because, as I’ve said a few minutes ago, people recognize that they have a rotten marriage and feel that they better not stay with it for the next 50 years. So that’s good.

Guterman: Are you saying, then, that mainly due to liberal attitudes, divorce rates have increased?

Ellis: I’m not sure if it’s mainly that, but that’s one of the big things. But there are, as I’ve said, lots of economic factors. One of the biggest factors…

Guterman: Mobility. Yeah.

Ellis: What?

Guterman: Mobility. As you’ve said.

Ellis: Yeah. And one of the biggest factors is the fact of a small number of children.

Guterman: You don’t see anything in terms of just more conflict in the world? More disturbance in the world? People are more disturbed? You don’t see that as a factor?

Ellis: I’m not sure. I think people are as disturbed as they ever were. But I don’t know that we could prove that they’re more disturbed.

Guterman: So, if they are as disturbed—when in the past?

Ellis: Yeah. Take 50 years ago when divorce rates were lower.

Guterman: They were as disturbed as they are today.

Ellis: People may have been just as disturbed.

Guterman: And if that were so, you would attribute that to…

Ellis: But they were more stable because they followed more conservative rules of once you marry you stay married. You have a job, you stay in the job. There is more job mobility than there used to be years ago.