Fallout shelter needed

Huffington Post has a good article up by a child of divorce on the immediate and long-term effects: "Part of the problem with divorce, is that it is impossible to accurately predict the fallout."

'Til Death Do Us Part

This article on Gwyneth Paltrow's choice of words regarding her divorce from Chris Martin struck me as interesting for two reasons.

First, the author starts out sounding like she is all for the idea of a kinder, gentler divorce, especially because as a child of divorce herself, she struggles with feeling like her family is broken. But then by the end of the article, she reveals that she is troubled by the thought that one could enter marriage with the idea that it is a transitory relationship.

But without even the intention to make it for the long haul, won’t relationships end even earlier? To me, adding an escape clause to the highest level of commitment would only weaken it.

Good point.

The other interesting thing I found in this article was how worldview played into the conscious uncoupling concept. The article has a link to a post on Paltrow's web site by Habib Sadeghi, in which "he mentions how mating for life was easier when life was shorter. Since cavemen lived till their early 30s, they could stay together till death do them part, no problem."

Of course, if one holds a slightly different worldview, say one that involves guys like Methuselah and Noah trudging along through life for 969 and 950 years respectively, a paltry 50 or 60 years of marriage should seem like a real piece of cake.

Whispers of truth about divorce

These images speak for themselves.

Love, Hawaiian Style

I posted a few weeks ago about a recent episode of Hawaii Five-O that featured Danny, a.k.a. Danno, learning that his parents are about to divorce and then talking about his own divorce with his young daughter.

The story line continued this week with Danny and daughter conspiring to get his parents to reconcile. What child of divorce hasn't fantasized that story line?  (Blame it on The Parent Trap if you want.)

As a total side note, not that I can picture Melanie Griffiths playing James Caan's wife, but wouldn't it have been kind of fun if they'd been able to get Danno's real life dad to play his on-screen dad? Just a thought.

Little People, Big Marriage Problems

The stars of "Little People, Big World" are attempting a trial separation. Putting your family through the rigors of reality TV has been a tough gig for more families than the Roloffs. Here's hoping they can work things out and find a way to keep this 26 year marriage together.

A friend in the neighborhood

I am convinced it is no coincidence that Mister Rogers--the sweater-wearing, singing, owner of a secret puppet wonderland--thrived on television during the late 60s and 70s. At a time when divorce rates were skyrocketing and children were reeling, who better to spend a little time with each day than someone who told you that you were special, that you were listened to, that your feelings mattered.

I was reminded of this recently as I watched the documentary "Mister Rogers and Me" on PBS.  In one of the opening bits, Wagner tells the story he recounts in his blog here, about Mister Rogers asking about his parents' divorce.  The story is just as any kid who grew up watching the show would imagine: Mister Rogers talking about something no one else wants to talk about with kids, giving the kid permission to express what he's feeling, and then letting it all end with a comforting and mood-changing song that says 'even in the midst of sad things, at least we still have each other.'

No wonder we all loved him.

Divorce, Hawaiian style

Last week's episode of Hawaii Five-O featured a two-generation story of divorce. Melanie Griffith plays Danno's mom. (Which leads me to wonder, when did Melanie Griffith get old enough to play the mother of a police detective? How time flies.) Danno is expecting his parents to come for a visit, but his mother arrives alone and announces that she is leaving his father.

Later in the episode, Danno talks with his daughter and his mom about his own divorce and how hard it was to tell his daughter that he and her mother were not going to be married anymore. His daughter tells Danno that she remembers that night well and remembers that he then went into his own room and she could hear him crying.

The episode is an interesting twist on a familiar theme. Instead of a character's impending divorce dredging up memories of his parents' divorce, here the parents' impending divorce is bringing back a flood of memories and emotions about his own divorce -- and about his feelings of failure and disappointment as a father.

Time for some straight talk

Time magazine has a good article on the state of the American family, including the devastating effects of divorce on children. Two snippets:

a lasting covenant between a man and a woman can be a vehicle for the nurture and protection of each other, the one reliable shelter in an uncaring world —or it can be a matchless tool for the infliction of suffering on the people you supposedly love above all others, most of all on your children...

...is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation's own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can't be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children's lives — that's the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.

What has to be done

Now, this is a poster child for a child of divorce. Ronetta Alexander managed to run track, get a doctorate in pharmacology, and raise her teenage sister. While "Alexander's friends marvel at her maturity and self-reliance," Ronetta told The State newspaper, "I just thought, it's life. To me, it's life."

Heartbreaking

From a column in the Telegraph:

I am still trying to come to terms with my parents' divorce, 54 years ago. I've recently spent time with my 92-year-old father whom I hadn't seen for 25 years, and before that, for nearly 30. Following the divorce, Dad moved to Canada to start a new life and we heard little from him. He bought a computer for his 90th birthday and we began emailing, which is how we came to meet again. The two weeks we have just shared were very special. I felt a mixture of great happiness, because we got on so well, and sadness because I have missed so much.

Read more here.

Zing or sting?

Coming soon to a theater near you, a hilarious satire about grown children of divorce still caught in the crossfire. Hahahaha, I'm laughing already. At least it's billed as a dark comedy. The writers of the screenplay had this to say about their script being picked up by Miramax: "We're very glad to get the validation from Miramax, especially since we've been working on the script longer than any of our parents were married." Mom and Dad must be so proud.

Sibling squabbles

Yesterday's Washington Post reported that Cindy McCain has two half-sisters, one of whom is upset that Mrs. McCain talks about herself as an only child. Then, Vanity Fair in Italy broke news that Senator Obama has a half brother who lives in poverty in Kenya.

The implication in both cases seems to be that we should blame the famous half siblings for something, but is that really fair? Who knows what bad blood has passed between Mrs. McCain and her half sister, but I would guess that the half sister's rage is really toward her father who abruptly and without explanation cut her and her children out of an inheritance they apparently expected. Senator Obama has only met his half brother twice. Neither of them ever lived with their half siblings.

I blogged some time ago on the distinctions that children of divorce often make between family relationships. It's not surprising to me that Mrs. McCain and Senator Obama feel disconnected from people who share a parent and little else with them. Mrs. McCain's half sister expressed anger at hearing the Senator's wife describe herself as an "only child," and if she said she was the only child of her father, I can understand the half sister's dismay; but what if she said she was the only child of her father and mother? Another story altogether.

Ah, the complications that divorce brings into our lives!

Someone should be committed

With all due respect to this columnist, he has missed the point. Apparenty, in an earlier column Neil the columnist advised a man to leave his wife. A reader offered this protest:

This life is not all about you. Your happiness is not the center of the known universe. This man has three children, a wife and I imagine friends and extended family who will also be fractured from this, and all you talked to him about is his happiness. Do you think children or young adults will be happier because one parent decides to pursue their own happiness?

Unmoved, Neil the columnist responds:

No, I would argue that couples, even couples with children, should not stay together if they are psychologically divorced — or if one of them is. It’s too cold an environment to bring kids up in, and it’s unhealthy for everyone involved. Few marriages are made in heaven, but no one should have to tolerate hell forever.

What Neil fails to realize is that the end of an unhappy marriage for the person who feels trapped in it may feel like an escape from hell for him or her, but it is really just the beginning of hell for the kids whose lives will never be the same. And, can't you just imagine this conversation: "Kids, as you know, I psychologically divorced your mother five years ago." Huh?

Now, try imagining this conversation between a father and his adult child: "Son, marriage with your mother has been difficult and not at all what I expected. Still, I made a commitment to her and to you kids and no matter how difficult things were, no matter how much I was tempted to think that I might be happier if I left, I couldn't do that to you all. I love you and I want you to know that commitments are important and you are important. It's important to stand by your commitments, Son, even when they are difficult to follow through on."

Hmm. That's probably just too crazy to imagine.

Now you see Dad, now you don't

Children of divorce sometimes talk about having to be selective in their memories, parsing out the stories of vacations and holidays and fun times depending on which parent they are with at the moment and which parent was or was not a participant in the original festivities. We lose something of ourselves by having to carefully edit our speech. Now it seems, we're in danger of having our visual memories edited for the comfort and convenience of others as well.

Idealized images, she said, can give people “a new script for dealing with problems families have always had: family members who don’t get along, divorce.”

“If you can’t have the perfect family,” she added, “at least you can Photoshop it.”

HT: Gina Dalfonso

All I can say is, wow...

Seen in the Washington Post:

"She was always my hero when I was growing up. . . . I feel like I have to be the mother now." -- Brooke Hogan, daughter of former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and sister to the incarcerated Nick Hogan, speaking to "Access Hollywood" on her strained relationship with her mother, Linda, 48, who is dating a 19-year-old former classmate of Brooke's.

80 years, still hurting

From a column in the Toledo Blade:

Father's Day was never a favorite holiday for me as a child. When I saw it coming on the calendar I was uneasy. Would it be my Sunday to be with my dad? If it weren't, I would have to wish him a Happy Father's Day on the Sunday before or after.

As a child of divorce, who as a senior citizen still feels the pain, I share these personal experiences for divorced single parents. It is not a request for sympathy, but a message that I hope will sink in to single mothers and fathers.

We all hear the staggering numbers of today's divorce rates. Back in the early '30s, on the brink of the Great Depression, it was quite uncommon. I was 3 years old. All I remember is that one day my dad didn't come home from the post office, and from that day on I saw him every other Sunday, according to a court order, and two weeks in summer.

Amy-able wedding advice

Dear Amy: My daughter is getting married this summer. She is 22. Her biological father left us in 1994 for his secretary and has since married her. He pays child support and calls once in a while, but he was distant through her "terrible teens." I remarried in 1996. Our combined kids were 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 at the time we married. My husband and kids have been close, and now that there is a wedding, the secretary/second wife has contacted our daughter and asked about the ceremony. She wants to make sure my daughter's biological dad walks her down the aisle. She says only the biological dad should do so. The kids and I believe the stepdad should be involved because he has chosen to be a part of the kids' lives for more than 12 years, dealing with cuts, scrapes, car crashes, boys, school, etc.I would not dream of excluding the stepdad or the new step-secretary-wife of the biological dad. This must be a common problem. What do you suggest? How can both dads be involved?—Wondering Mom

Click here to read Amy's sound advice.

BreakPoint weighs in on divorce

Today's BreakPoint radio commentary features the post I did on "Redeeming Divorce."

...as Kristine Steakley, author of the forthcoming book Child of Divorce, Child of God and a blogger at The Point, wrote recently, “God offers us a better comfort. He doesn’t give us acceptance; He gives us redemption. . . . His comfort does not say, ‘Well, that’s just the way things are; better get used to it.’ Rather, His comfort says that our world is essentially broken and that our only hope is the redemption that He himself offers.”

And that is the message the Church must send to the Divorce Generation. The brokenness caused by divorce is palpable. The pain is real. There is a reason God says, “I hate divorce.” But He is also the God who makes all things new, Who binds up the broken-hearted.

Protecting baby

From an article in the Washington Post:

Parenthood...is turning the "whatever" generation into hyper-vigilant homebodies.

"We're the first to be raised in day care in record numbers. Forty percent of us were latchkey kids. We were raised on television and Star Wars. We have an abiding fear of being left alone or feeling abandoned, so we will do anything to avoid recreating that in our own children's experience. We're ultra protective," said Susan Gregory Thomas, author of Buy Buy Baby, a book about baby-product marketing.

One step removed...or not

Every divorce blog out there has been linking to this new study that says divorced people are less likely to be taken care of by their children as they age. I haven't linked to it because I had yet to see anyone saying anything that seemed particularly insightful...until now. Elizabeth Marquardt published an op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post on the supposed trend. Here's a short excerpt:

In his study, Temple University's Davey found that aging stepparents were only half as likely as biological parents to receive care from grown children. "Society does not yet have a clear set of expectations for stepchildren's responsibility," he observed.

You can say that again. All stepchildren and stepparents forge a relationship in their own way. Some become deeply attached, some are virtually strangers, many fall somewhere in between. Even when stepchildren and stepparents are close, the deep ambiguity of the relationship can make losing a stepparent to death or divorce a profoundly lonely experience for the child. A friend told me about a colleague who had recently nursed her beloved stepmother, a woman she had grown up with, during a long illness. Even as she mourned her stepmother's death, the woman was mystified and hurt by the lack of support she had received from many friends and co-workers, who'd wondered why she would go out of her way to provide long-term, hands-on care to someone who was "only" a stepmother.

Her story was all too familiar to me. When I was 13, my beloved stepfather took his own life. He and my mother had been divorced for several years, but from the time I was 3 years old until they separated when I was 9, he had been my in-the-home father, a man I'd fallen in love with not long after my mother had. His death was devastating for all of us, but my immense grief, which stretched through my teenage years and into my 20s, was made all the more lonely and isolating because almost no one around me -- friends, teachers, many members of my extended family -- recognized that I'd lost anyone of importance at all.

There are parents who leave, never to be heard from again, who are complete strangers to their natural children. I think we're usually apt to admire children who can overlook years of neglect to care for a parent who falls into this category. By the same token, as Marquardt points out, there are stepparents who hold as deep or deeper a relationship with their stepchildren than do the children's absent natural parent.

Some time ago, I blogged here about the different words we sometimes use to define step relationships. Those words often reveal the different levels of our connectedness to our family members. Until now, no one seemed to be considering this study in light of the varying degrees of connection that children have with their stepfamilies in particular.