Divorce and children

I’ve started reading a book on the effects of divorce on children. And it’s a depressing read. What the author is saying is that from chatting to and doing surveys on, hundreds of people whose parents divorced when they were kids (and she deliberately chose children who since appear to have done well, ie, gone to university and got good jobs, don’t have obvious ‘issues’ and compared them with similar people whose parents did not spilt up) and found, from the point of view of the children there is no such thing as a ‘good divorce’.

Adults tend to think that a good divorce is one where both parents still love and see the child, they don’t argue or put down other parent in front of the children, they get along amenably on anything to do with the child’s welfare and education. If they do this the child will be fine and in fact divorce is a good thing because now both parents can be happy. This may (sort of) be true in the case of the parents but it is not the case for the children (though of course, during divorce, lack of conflict is better than conflict).

It also said that research has shown that, actually, mothers almost always come off worse than fathers. Not just for financial reasons – not the case for me thank goodness – but because, women are significantly less likely than men to have another long-term relationship or get married, even if they get divorced in their 30s. And another relationship gets less likely as they get older. It’s made even more less likely if the mother is the one with custody of the children. Men on the other hand are more likely to have another relationship and that likelihood gets greater as they get older. This makes sense to me in some ways but not in others. Does it basically mean that men are always coupling off with younger women who have never been married? Otherwise, where are all these women coming from?!

The reason that children are never entirely ok after a divorce is to do with having to split themselves between the two lives and homes of their parents. They say that they never fully feel part of either, are forced to grow up and form their own ideas about morality and ethics at a far younger age than children from homes where the parents are together (due to parents having different rules and ways of living so they have to decide on what they want for their own beliefs) and that they even adapt different ways of acting in each household to appease the parents, which in the end leads them to never feel sure who they really are. This bit rings true to me and confirmed what i suspected. Because i saw it in my step-son. It was so obvious that he was a completely different person in each house, even when he was only four. He had a split personality. You could feel, and see, him changing personality on the drive between her house and ours. I really worried what that was doing to him psychologically.

I haven’t read to the end yet. But basically what it is saying is that if you are the 2/3 of people divorcing, or thinking of divorcing, where there is no seriously compelling reason (abuse, violence etc) then, it is best, for the kids at least, to stay together. Because they have discovered that even kids whose parents were unhappy but stayed together, were emotionally better off than those kids whose parents didn’t.

Its gutting reading i can tell you. I feel horrible about what this is doing to E and i didn’t even get the choice!!! M wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of staying together. Because he is such a selfish c...

I think that the only thing i can do is to continue as long as i can to make it so that M does not have E over night so that his main home is here, to try and avoid the feeling of being split for as long as possible. Never to agree to the alternate weeks with each parent thing (i had decided that already after reading an account from a child who said they had fewer friends because of this cos their friends didn’t bother meeting them after school cos they never knew which house they were in) and always to be aware of the split of allegiances that E will feel. And talk about it with him as soon as he is able, so at least it is a feeling that is out in the open and maybe can be dealt with. The kids in the book weren’t able to discuss this feeling because they didn’t want to upset their parents and felt they were the only ones going through it.

Other than that i can’t think what to do!

It’s horrible. I feel horrible. Depressed, wretched, upset and a failure. I love that child so, so much and i don’t want for this to have had to happen to him!!!


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