5) Explore what you already know. Access Leading Issue summaries ("Topic Overview" or "At Issue" Pages) and Timeline (under Research Tools) from the SIRS Leading Issue you have chosen. In 3-5 sentences, summarize the background and historical information of the Leading Issue you selected. Include main controversies, key figures, important organizations, and key events.

Briefly list what you know about your topic already. Consider the following:

• Surprising facts or statistics:

1. In America, there is one divorce approximately every 36 seconds*. That's nearly2,400 divorces per day, 16,800 divorces per week and 876,000 divorces a year.
2. People wait an average of three years after a divorce to remarry (if they remarry at all).
3. If your parents are happily married, your risk of divorce decreases by 14 percent.
4. The divorce rate among couples with children is 40 percent lower than couples without children
5. Half of all American children will witness the breakup of a parent's marriage. Of these children, close to half will also see the breakup of a parent's second marriage.

• the extent of the problem

1. A staggering 40 per cent of marriages are now doomed to end in divorce, despite the bad press: divorce is bad for your health, bad for your purse and particularly bad for your children. In the course of researching a book I have written with Fiona Shackleton, a divorce lawyer, I have been continually surprised by the misery that divorce inflicts upon families - often more, it seems to me, than the misery of an unhappy marriage.

• important people or institutions involved

1. Statistics tell us that first marriages today stand a 45 percent chance of breaking up and second marriages a 60 percent chance. But those numbers just confirm what we already knew: Divorce has increased not only in frequency but also in acceptance. And even if we don’t focus on figures per se, we know that today far more marriages end in divorce than a couple of decades ago.
2. Judith Wallerstein, senior lecturer emerita at the University of Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare, states in her 2000 book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: “The prevailing climate of opinion was that divorce would allow adults to make better choices and happier marriages by letting them undo earlier mistakes. They would arrive at an honest, mutual decision to divorce, because if one person wanted out, surely it could not be much of a marriage. These attitudes were held by men and women of many political persuasions, by lawyers, judges, and mental health professionals alike.”

• key schools of thought

1. the University of Berkeley’s School
2. New Canaan (CT) Public Schools

• common misconceptions

1. 1. Living Together Before Marriage Decreases the Risk of Divorce
2. Mothers Always Win Gain Custody 
3. No-Fault Divorce is Quicker and Cheaper
4. Marital Assets Are Split 50/50:
5. My Spouse Will be Punished For Cheating

• observations you've made

1.  Its  heartbroking to think of all the suffering, shattered dreams, and confused kids. If you’ve been through it, or known someone who’s been through divorce, it seems hard.

• important trends

1. The information provided by couples on these certificates allows us to monitor the occurrences of marriages and divorces.
2. To be at risk for divorce, couples must first be married. Rates of first marriages have fluctuated dramatically over the past 70 years

• major controversies

1. Most kids suffer emotionally
2. They are detached from a parent in order to be raised 

5a) Read the Essential Question, Pro/Con articles, and Viewpoints to learn about the claims of your Leading Issue topic of argument. What are all the claims related to the Leading Issue topic of argument you selected? (A claim is a position on a topic you will argue with evidence to support it).

5b) Think about which claim you would like to be the focus of your argument. Think about this: 'Which claim do I most strongly agree with?' If you want to challenge yourself even more, select a claim you do not strongly agree with for a more challenging topic of logical argument.