Effects of Divorce on Future Generations

     "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov is one of my favorite short stories. By reading the story I am reminded of a very important topic in today's society, divorce. Divorce is a subject that should not be taken lightly, but I am afraid that in today's generation it is. In reality, divorce is becoming so common that nobody makes a big deal about it anymore. More people are leaving their husbands and wives and children are being raised by single parents every day.

     Chekhov put an important and real meaning behind his story. I do not agree with Anna or Dmitri's actions and I wish they could have found another way to deal with their marital problems. Research shows that many of today's young adults are beginning to marry at a young age. Teenagers think they are in love and want to act older then what they are because they think it is cool, which leads to them jumping into a marriage they are not ready for. In "The Lady with the Dog" it even states that Dmitri might have jumped into a commitment that he was not ready for, "He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he." Dmitri did not know everything about his wife and I assume some of the bad habits drove him crazy.

     Children are the main one affected by divorce. It causes all sorts of emotional and physical problems that they have to learn to deal with. The narrator of the story states, "He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school." I wonder how Dmitri's children would react if they knew what their dad had been doing in secret with other women that were not their mother. When Dmitri's children find out about their dad's actions then they will be heartbroken to see a man they look up to treating his family like dirt. Children in today's society usually deal with their pain from a broken family with violence, crime, and drug abuse. Divorce is tearing out future generations apart because the effects of divorce follow them into adulthood. Children who experience divorce in their families tend to have poor math, reading, and spelling skills because they give up on things just like their parents gave up on their marriage.

     "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekhov shows me what cheating does to people's lives. I understand that Anna and Dmitri are not happy in their marriages, but there are other ways to go about it. Marriage is the foundation for our future and family. If people keep tossing marriage aside like it is nothing then what kind of message is being sent to the future generations?

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. "The Lady with the Dog." Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing Ninth Edition (2009): 462-471. Print.