Writer and reporter, Kristina Cowan, writes at her blog on her responses to the recent Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? report. As a Gen Xer she shares that she really didn’t think about the impact of her parent’s divorce until she got married:
“In a piece in The Atlantic, Amy Ziettlow, one of the report’s co-authors, raises other key points. Most children of divorce don’t understand what separated their parents. We might treat our friends like family. And we may grapple with how to build trust. “Scholars are finding that the legacy of divorce echoes throughout a child’s entire life story and, as my young daughter reminded me, for these children and for our culture, the story is sad.”
Most of the findings and statements above are true for me. I didn’t realize how deep my divorce wounds were until I was married. I’ve struggled to trust my husband. I trust my friends more than anyone–especially those from college, a time when I regained, through them, a sense of family. My close cadre of college friends became my domestic church, as the report suggests. As I mentioned in my last post, my parents’ shattered union is still a mystery.
I’ve long been challenged to find a church that feels like home. There are two exceptions. The tiny church in Arlington, Va., where I was married, and the massive Moody Church in Chicago. They’re markedly different places. But both offered me a sense of acceptance and unconditional love. I’m still hesitant to get involved, to trust and worship in these formal institutions. I suspect that part of this trouble stems from the fact that I didn’t spend much time in church with an intact family. The time I did spend was with my mom and her friends, mostly post-divorce….” Read More…
The previous post she writes concerning her mother’s death is also quite powerful.
She is currently working on a project exploring women who faced a difficult time transitioning into motherhood. She is conducting a survey, it’s anonymous unless you would like for her to contact you, and here is the link.
Categories: Aging, Disability, Death, Dying, Children of Divorce, General
couldn’t access the survey link
I know I can be a bit of a broken record on this, but sometimes the case against divorce seems to blame every single problem everyone experiences on their parents’ divorce. If you don’t feel perfectly happy at every moment of your life, or if you experience any doubts or angst, it’s because your parents divorced – not because you’re human.
All the problems she lists here, are problems commonly experienced by adult children of married parents.
I don’t think the author here is talking about “not feeling perfectly happy” or “experiencing doubts or angsts”. There are real consequences to divorce, and the studies and research demonstrate that children of divorce have challenges to overcome that are very real, and very unique to them. Yes, there is a “tragic” element in “being human”, who can deny that? But while all issues a person faces do not stem necessarily from one central cause, that doesn’t mean some issues don’t stem from that cause. And if the issue seems to come up over and over again, that doesn’t mean the issue isn’t there, it may just be pointing to how pervasive the issue really is. And if the problems faced seem similar to those that others experience that have not had ‘divorce’ in their family, that doesn’t make the problems the same, only similar, and the diagnosis, treatment, and response to the problem is not likely to demand same verdict. “Being human” doesn’t really feel like a diagnosis to me.
Those that were not affected by the split of their parents are lucky. Those that were however affected and are able to overcome the damaging effects of divorce in their lives, and are able to come out with grace and forgiveness are cause for great cheer! There is an element to “being human” that invites to reach in, stare into the tragic eyes wide-open, and find the ability to overcome circumstance. There-in is the great inspiration.
1) The author certainly is talking about doubts and angst. “we may grapple with how to build trust… I’ve struggled to trust my husband… I’ve long been challenged to find a church that feels like home.” These are indisputably examples of doubts and angst.
2) I don’t know of a single study that shows that children of divorced homes have any “unique” problems. They are statistically more likely to experience some problems (although most turn out fine), but that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones who ever experience those problems.
1) Indisputably? I felt there was a little more than doubt and angst going on there. But if you read distrust and doubt to be the same, perhaps. Angst, maybe, but I read into a little more as real ‘anxiety’. So I guess I would dispute this, but don’t care to be right. All I was getting at, I felt you were trivializing something that shouldn’t be.
2) We probably define “unique” differently, I’m not sure. For example, when two parents split up, they are often geographically separated, and a child shifts between the care of the two parents (typically, but not always). In any case, the nature of the relationship between child and parent changes. This is unique to children with parents that have split up, that don’t live with each other. This has an effect on children. Children with parents that don’t split up, don’t feel the exact same residual effect of this, though they may have similar issues (just as big), the issues are not the same.
It seems to me that I misunderstood you. When you said “and the studies and research demonstrate that children of divorce have challenges to overcome that are very real, and very unique to them,’ I thought about the studies I’ve seen showing that children of divorced parents are more likely to drop out of high school, etc (although ‘more likely’ doesn’t mean “doomed to”).
Of course children of parents who have split up (divorced or not) deal with specific problems like shifting between two parental homes. I didn’t realize that was the sort of thing you were referring to. My bad.
@Barry Deutsch, I think sometimes there are harms done by something that are hard to quantify.
From what I know (and I don’t know all the research on this by a long shot), divorce dramatically increases the chance that children will have a number of big problems like not finishing high school. However, most kids won’t have those problems.
I think that studies of smaller effects are relatively new. Recently, I think there was a study showing that children whose parents divorced are more likely to be behind in math years after the divorce.
Studies like those miss something, though. Children whose parents divorce suffer. Some of them grow up and talk about it. Some of them make connections between the divorce and issues they have related to other people. I don’t think we can dismiss what people are saying just because we don’t have a big study showing that adult children of divorce have more trust issues than other people.
For those wondering–hey! where can I read more about children of divorce, there is a FABULOUS Lit review http://www.centerformarriageandfamilies.org/shape-of-families/SOFSF-Lit-Review.pdf
that was done as a part of the Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? project. the Lit review focuses on all scholarly work.
The Annotated Bibliography focuses on trade publications, films, etc.
http://www.centerformarriageandfamilies.org/shape-of-families/SOFSF-Bib-Books.pdf
We (and I say we, but it was Elizabeth and David Lapp) did this because this is all she wrote! There’s not a lot of research.