Why are people celebrating Divorce Day?

The first Monday of the New Year has long been known among solicitors and counsellors as "Divorce Day", marking the day when lawyers reportedly see a spike in couples filing to end their marriages. According to UK-based law firm Wright Hassall, there has been a huge increase in divorce enquiries on average in January, with searches for ‘divorce lawyer’ 36.08% higher in January 2021 than the 2021 average. Additionally, Google searches for ‘how to start divorce’ were 52.38% higher in January 2020 than the rest of the year's average.
Sharing her perspective on Divorce Day, Ayesha Vardag, President - VARDAGS (a divorce and family law firm) told Asian Voice, “In the weeks following my divorce, decades ago, my friends persuaded me that a ‘divorce party’ was the perfect way to relaunch and empower myself, as a single woman aged 30. So, I went ahead and rented a room above a gastropub in Islington, ready to begin the festivities in a suitably bold pair of black leather trousers. But it didn’t work. The bubbles and buzz of other beings couldn’t mask my heartbreak. I didn’t want to celebrate the loss of my soulmate. And even as time has passed and the wounds have healed, I still regret the divorce party. Though not a total disaster, I just wasn’t ready. It didn’t feel right, and it did nothing to ‘relaunch or empower’ me at the time. But divorce, in your own time, is a milestone that can be celebrated personally. Once time has allowed you to process the grief - or even just the unfamiliarity of separation - divorce can be a real opportunity for growth, freedom to develop oneself, new love(s) and new opportunities. Forget about divorce parties - your future is the thing worth celebrating.”
Poonam Chudasama, Family Solicitor at My Family Law UK was quoted by an online publication saying, “Divorce Day, as it is known, is seen to be the busiest day for divorces but as a solicitor dealing with divorces, I can tell you this categorically is not the case. The first week of January after all the holidays and children going back to school is, without doubt, a time for reflection and there is certainly an increase in enquiries about divorce proceedings, but I find that people want to be prepared before they start any such proceedings because there are more important issues to resolve such as finances and children. Having a set day like Divorce Day, and how it is portrayed in the media, is insensitive to families struggling in their marriages. There are emotional factors in play as well as dealing with a very practical process to end a marriage. However, I have seen a 40% increase in applications for divorce over the past 10 months.”
Discussing Divorce Day, Dr Kaveri Qureshi, Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Science, The University of Edinburgh, told the newsweekly, “Sociologists used to describe British Asians as 'flying the flag for traditional family life'. But whilst the levels of lone parenthood among British Asians remain far, far lower than those in Black British families, at 14% and 12% respectively, the proportion of Pakistani and Bangladeshi children growing up in lone-parent families in 2019 was not really very far off the 19% of White British children. This shows us that we need to challenge the idea that British Asian families are straightforwardly 'traditional' families.” Here, she referenced data from the 2019 Labour Force Survey of England and Wales that shows that 63% of Black Caribbean, 62% of Black Other and 43% of Black African children are growing up in lone-parent families.
Dr Qureshi’s research has explored the reasons behind British Asian divorces. According to her, the reasons for any individual marriage breaking down are highly complex, but she drew out four broad patterns: marriage breakdowns as a result of a lack of (financial) commitment; women not putting up with any more of the power inequalities in their marriage; sexual unfairness and infidelity; and partners wanting love and not getting it. So, even though there might often be cultural particularities to the marriage dynamics (eg. when the couple lives with extended family members, marriages often coming about by family arrangement, or involving marriage migration) it seems that British Asian couples have similar marital expectations to those described for majority ethnic couples. “Very few of the separating couples I spoke to had been to a relationship therapist or counsellor - this seems to be because ethnic majority therapists tend to either not understand, or to exoticize the cultural differences at play,” Dr Qureshi told us.
She further added, “People often assume that divorce is highly stigmatised in British Asian families. Although my research did identify many cases where divorces led to very significant frictions, and sometimes to separating partners - especially women - becoming cut off from their families; overwhelmingly, people described their families coming around to things over time. So it seems that British Asian communities have taken on board the fragility of marriage and the possibility of divorce and that this is changing the practices of family life in subtle ways, to accommodate new expectations about how family members should behave in the context of divorce.”
So does this mean that with Divorce Day, young South Asians are jumping on the bandwagon of the latest fad? No. Factors like children, finances and the larger society continue to play very important roles in making a decision as significant as filing for a divorce. Rather, for those celebrating Divorce Day, it can be taken as a mark of more financially and socially liberated people gradually refusing to compromise for something that no longer works for them, especially compared to their often-first-generation immigrant seniors.