Posted on 10/11/2005 6:31:45 PM PDT by WarEagle
DIVORCE STUDY BREAKS NEW GROUND
If you've been in the marriage debate for 20 years, you seldom hear something really new.
But Elizabeth Marquardt (a former colleague of mine at the Institute for American Values) has just released a startlingly original study of children of divorce, "Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce" (Crown). Marquardt is a child of a good divorce herself, with parents who both continued to love, see and support her.
Marquardt has two insights: The first is that suffering matters. The divorce debate has been obsessed with social science pathologies -- if you get divorced, will your child be a high school dropout? A pregnant teen? Clinically depressed? And yes, the social science evidence shows that when parents don't stay married, children are at increased risk for these negative outcomes and a whole lot more. (My shop, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, just released "Do Married Parents Reduce Crime?" a review of recent research linking family structure and delinquency. For a copy, e-mail joshua@imapp.org.)
But most children of divorce aren't depressed dropouts who turn to a life of crime. Yet Marquardt wants to tell us that neither do most children emerge from divorce unscathed by the experience.
For a parent, the news from divorce-land offered in Marquardt's nationally representative data is heartbreaking: For example, adult children of divorce are three times more likely to disagree with the statement "I generally felt physically safe" as a child. Four out of 10 children of divorce say they "generally felt emotionally safe" as a child, compared to almost eight out of 10 children in intact families. Only one-third of children of divorce strongly agreed that "Children were at the center of my family" (compared with 63 percent of children whose parents stayed married). Children of divorce were six times more likely than children of intact families to strongly agree that "I was alone a lot as a child." When asked where they went when they needed comfort, only a minority of children of divorce said to one or both of their parents (33 percent), compared to almost 68 percent of children in intact families. Almost 70 percent of children whose parents stayed married strongly agreed that "My childhood was filled with playing," compared to just 43 percent of children of divorce.
Thirty-eight percent of children in divorced families (compared to 13 percent in intact families) agreed that "There are things my mother has done that I find hard to forgive." The majority of children of divorce (51 percent, compared to 17 percent of children in intact families) agreed that "There are things my father has done that I find hard to forgive."
Clearly, divorce does something to childhood and to children, even when it doesn't "permanently damage" them in the ways that social scientists know how to measure.
Marquardt's second insight into the damage divorce does runs something like this. Every child has a double-origin, a mother and a father, to whom he or she longs to attach. When parents marry, it is their job to reconcile these differences into a union, to give their child a single family in which to grow up. With divorce, the adults announce they have given up on the task. But the job doesn't go away, because a child's need to make sense of his or her own identity doesn't end with the marriage. Instead, the adult job of making sense of two increasingly different adult worlds gets handed to a small child, who must wrestle with big questions unacknowledged, unaided and alone.
A good divorce, she says, is better than a bad divorce, but it is no solution to the child's longing for an undivided self.
(Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at MaggieBox2004@yahoo.com.)
A lot of children were conceived for no other reason than to trap a man. So naturally when the man bolts anyway the child is the detritus of a failed project and grows up feeling that way.
I'll bet most of the abused children in America were the legacy of failed "relationships" and are therefore of no further use or interest to their mother.
And how safe will a child feel in a home where there is an endless procession of strangers. New boyfriends/girlfriends.
.
Bingo.
Well said. The little one's are a part - a huge one, to be sure - of my family. By no means are they the "center".
The oldest one and I are still working through this.
LVM
I agree, WE. There are necessary divorces, and we should be careful about judging. But our culture has swung off the charts in the other direction. It is no light thing to break up a family, especially when children are involved, and should only be done for the most serious of reasons.
The natural order dictates that parents sacrifice their own comforts, and needs if necessary, for the wellbeing of the children. It's in that sense that children are the "center" of the family, not that they should be fawned over. Ideally, the true center of the family should be the Author of family, God Himself, "from Whom every family takes its name".
The consequences of divorce are heartbreaking, and more so when you've seen it far more up close and personal than you ever wanted to. It's an insideous force that's at war against the family is these last days.
p.
>>>and most likely this 'children at the center of the family' is what is causing most divorces.
Is there any research at all to support this statement? I find it completely unbelievable that "most" divorces are caused by parents putting "children at the center of the family" or otherwise being too devoted to the kids.>>>
No research, just life experience. When the focus is centered on the children, your relationship lacks. For instance, I had a problem going out for the evening, the youngest would cry. I heard a statement "Better they cry for a few minutes than cry for a lifetime because Mom and Dad got divorced." So very very true. When Mom and Dad are happy, the children are happy. That of course doesn't mean you neglect or don't dote on your kids. There is just an order of success (IMO) to a family. Focus first on God, then on relationship of each other, then on the kids.
Good for you. The hardest thing in the world is to make the best of a bad situation.
>>>You are exactly right. I bet it made your marriage more solid, too.>>>
Yes it did.
>>>I find it completely unbelievable that "most" divorces are caused by parents putting "children at the center of the family" or otherwise being too devoted to the kids.>>>
I wanted to also expand on this. I absolutely believe that this is a part of alot of divorces. How many times have you seen the mother (as a for instance) completely consumed with the kids. Morning noon and night. Not just taking care of, but consumed with nothing BUT the kids. Too tired for sex, cause of the kids. Too busy for a lunch date, cause of the kids. Too worried about leaving the kids, can't go out for romantic dinner. Then there is Dad. Excluded most times from that part as he is busy working and Mom is spending all her time with/for the kids. Dad meets Sally Sue who has no morals or scruples. You get the idea.
The situation can also be reversed, but honestly, do you not see how this happens?
good analysis. There is disjunction in that argument a mile wide.
>>>good analysis. There is disjunction in that argument a mile wide.>>>
How so?
this sounds like an argument of the mother as an individual centering her life on the kids, not the family , i.e. the father and mother together with the children. The cause of the divorce in your example is unfaithfulness in the marriage and conversely, the fact that the family was NOT centered on the kids.
I think you are taking this wrong.
My husband's parents were divorced and mine weren't.
My parents made decisions that benefited the whole family. My mom didn't work until I (the youngest) was in school full-time. I wasn't at home by myself much as a kid. We went on vacations that were family friendly (mountains, lakes, camping). My parents knew where I was at all times.
My husbands's parents made decisions that benefited them, and not the rest of the family. When his 15 year old sister got pregnant, his parents signed something so that she could get married. My husband spent lots of his time alone after school. My husband didn't go on trips after his parents divorced. His dad went on trips by himself, and his mom was broke. His parents didn't know where he was most of the time.
They grow up with the over-riding conviction that "there's nothing more important than how I feel."
Count on it.
some people spend years in psychoanalysis and thouands of bucks to get to that kind of insight... and you can get it on FreeRepublic for free. Thanks.
What you said is true. To be orphaned by death is one thing, to be orphaned by rejection another.
Just remember it's the same lesson they learn when their folks get divorced, too.
I wasn't interpreting it as advocacy for divorce, but I do think it helps explain pathologic narcissism.
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Takes a man and a woman to conceive a child (discounting brave new world methods) and it takes a man and a woman to raise a child. Single parents often do the best they can, but it is always more difficult. What to speak of woman choosing to have a child without a father/husband around - the height of selfishness. Well, not the height - that would be abortion. A society with a lot of dysfunctional kids due to broken familes is a society that much closer to breakdown.
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.