The Politically Incorrect Guide<sup>TM<sup> to Women, Sex, and Feminism by Carrie L. Lukas

Author:Carrie L. Lukas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Regnery Press
Published: 2010-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study, by Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee; New York, Hyperion, 2000.

Wallerstein’s interviews with the children revealed that while often aware that their parents aren’t entirely happy or at times fight they valued having the family intact. Even children whose parents were clearly in unhappy marriages were often shocked at the time of divorce and continued afterwards to long for their parents to get back together:

When one looks at the thousands of children that my colleagues and I have interviewed at our center since 1980, most of whom were from moderately unhappy marriages that ended in divorce, one message is clear: the children do not say they are happier. Rather, they say flatly, “The day my parents divorced is the day my childhood ended.”25

Perhaps the most interestingly aspect of Wallerstein’s research is her finding that the problems of divorce during childhood are not the end of the trail, but a prelude to what children will face as adults, when Wallerstein sees the most severe impact.26 She describes the effect of divorce on children as a “cumulative experience” that affects each developmental stage, but most profoundly, when children grow up and seek to create loving, lasting relationships of their own: “Their lack of inner images of a man and a woman in a stable relationship and their memories of their parents’ failure to sustain the marriage badly hobbles their search, leading them to heartbreak and even despair.”27

It’s not that children of divorce are less committed to the idea of marriage, but unlike their peers raised in intact marriages, children of divorce have lower expectations and fewer role models for how to make a marriage work. Indeed, without the positive role model of parents married to each other, children often go on to repeat many of their parent’s mistakes and end up getting divorced themselves, even if they have a strong desire for a stable marriage.

Wallerstein remains cautious in her advice to parents, providing the disclaimer that “I don’t know of any research, mine included, that says divorce is universally detrimental to children.”28 She also points out that some children describe benefits from the experience, such as becoming more independent and self-sufficient: “Finally, we see that many children of divorce are stronger for their struggles. They think of themselves as survivors who have learned to rely on their own judgment and to take responsibility for themselves and others at a young age.”29

In the end, she urges parents to consider carefully the decision to divorce and to see it as a last resort. She describes some of the children who were raised in unhappy but intact families. Their parents had very real complaints about their marriage and could have considered divorce, but choose not to:

Their marriages were not so explosive or chaotic or unsafe that husband and wife felt living together was intolerable. What can we learn from them? ... If this describes you, I think you should seriously consider staying together for the sake of your children.

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