Dear Tony,
Well, now I’m all fired up. You have fallen right into Wallerstein’s trap! You have accepted the notion that, basically, where divorce is concerned, the interests of children and parents are necessarily, fundamentally opposed–that divorce, barring horrible abuse, is always bad for kids. I don’t agree.
Sometimes it is bad, yes–and many parents in this situation realize this, and that’s one reason there are so many unhappy couples who stay together. I am thinking of people I know–a mother who fell in love with another man but stayed with her husband, the most disagreeable man in the world (although to be fair she’s no Princess Charming herself), until the kids finished high school because she didn’t want to disrupt their lives at a delicate moment of adolescence. Now she is married to the new man, her former husband is married to a new woman, the kids are grand successes in their fields, and everyone is much nicer than before. To the anti-divorce people, this is a terrible story: There was infidelity! A sacred vow was broken! No one went to Marriage Savers! The children were only college students, barely out of diapers, when the marriage broke up! What about society?! But to me what they did was sensible and right, and the lover who waited patiently in his little studio apartment (it was several years) is a virtual Sir Lancelot of romance.
The point is, the interests of children are not an all-or-nothing thing. Sure, a 5-year-old may not care that Daddy, like Larry’s daddy in Wallerstein’s book, is a violent misogynist who tried his best to destroy his ex-wife’s life–but you don’t stay 5 forever. If Larry’s parents had stayed together, do you think Larry would be thanking them at 30? What kind of father and husband would Larry be with Dad’s example constantly in his face? And what about Larry’s sister, whom the father treated with total contempt? Would she be glad her mother endured life with a brute? Little kids may see their parents “as a unit”–but in bad marriages the parents aren’t a unit. The children are mistaken–and the older they get, the more they realize this.
The truth is, we make kids do a lot of painful things they don’t understand for their own future good, like orthodontics. And we make them do a lot of things that are good for us but maybe not for them, even in the long run–like moving to take that new job, and moving again and again. What kids want when they are kids is not the last word on how their parents make most important decisions–it’s one consideration among many. Why should divorce be different?
We hear a lot from people who regret their parents’ divorce, but there are also plenty of people who regret their parents’ staying together. And I don’t just mean people who grew up in violent households, but people who grew up in families in which, for example, silence, contempt, depression, belittlement, anger, and blame (not to mention drinking and drugs and affairs) were the order of the day. You think grown-up women today are grateful their moms put up with awful marriages instead of throwing away the tranquilizers and getting a life? Thanks, Ma! Dad was banging his secretary for 20 years, I never heard you two say “I love you,” and I always heard you fighting after you thought I was asleep–but you sure did stay together! Wallerstein proposes that people endure bad marriages “graciously” for the sake of the kids–I think this is beyond human capacity unless both parents are having affairs, on the European plan–but you’ll notice structured infidelity is not part of the Wallerstein-Waite-Gallagher program!
Wallerstein (and maybe you too?) seems to think that people can just put up with being cold-shouldered and disrespected and undesired sexually for decades, and that this will have no cost–to themselves or to kids. But of course it does! “He admires me as a wonderful mother,” says one woman quoted by Wallerstein as a positive example. “As a wife I bore him in every way possible. But our children are wonderful and that’s what counts.” Tony, I ask you–what do you think the chances are that those kids don’t know that Dad thinks Mom is an idiot, and Mom has decided he’s right? What do you think the chances are that Dad will still be with that major drag, his wife, in 10 years when the kids are surly pains-in-the-neck instead of adorable toddlers? And when he leaves, of course, the wife will be devastated and feel cheated, having accepted life as the butt of her husband’s disdain as the price of marriage, and probably become very boring in the process!
I think people owe it to their children to divorce in a civilized way–to be generous with money and time, to treat their exes nicely (assuming the ex isn’t like Larry’s dad, that is), to pay attention to their children’s feelings, to avoid bringing home a string of casual partners, and so on. And there are ways in which kids suffer from divorce that public policy can change–letting the custodial parent and the kids live in the family house until the youngest graduates from high school, for instance, instead of requiring an immediate sale, which often means the kids lose their school, neighborhood, and friends. But whether divorce or staying together is the more painful for kids (and for the adults they will become) is a case-by-case question—and Wallerstein’s pseudoscience and blanket prescriptions don’t help.
Now, to your devil’s advocacy on behalf of the conservative view that European-style social benefits fray human bonds. Well, where’s the evidence? Europe has a lower divorce rate than we do, fewer people in prison, fewer poor and unhealthy kids; people move less and kill each other less. In Italy and Spain and Central Europe (don’t know about the other countries), young people live with their parents much later than here, and generations of families eat together more. Two-thirds of U.S. kids have TVs in their rooms–how’s that for fraying a human bond? They may not make a big sentimental fuss about it, but the “bonds of place and kinship” are stronger in welfare-state Western Europe than in shift-for-yourself America. Religion is not–I grant you that, although in my book that’s another point in Europe’s favor. Interestingly, many European countries have stricter divorce laws than we do–so even on Gallagher-style “morality,” the social democratic state wins.
Truth is, the conservatives talk out of both sides of their mouths–they’re all for unbridled capitalism, but then they don’t like what unbridled capitalism brings: fast food, violent entertainment, drugs, resentful poor people, teen-agers who can pay for their own Eminem CDs and condoms, liberal divorce laws, working moms, daycare. “All that is solid melts into air”–they can’t say Marx didn’t warn them! You’re a bit unfair, though, when you suggest I accuse conservatives of having “a cynical desire to make people unhappy and boss them around.” I didn’t say anything like that. I don’t even think it.
The interesting fact is that divorce is highest exactly where conservative ideology would say it should be lowest–and I don’t even mean in the ranks of Republican legislators. The most fundamentalist-Christian states have the highest divorce rates–Oklahoma is way up there–while liberal, secular-minded states like New York (!) have the lowest rates. This is very embarrassing for the Christian right. Fundamentalist pastors have even been quoted wondering if their communities, by making cohabitation unacceptable, cause people to marry too young and too hastily. It could be!
Well, I have really enjoyed this, Tony, but I suppose we have toseparate now as a “Book Club” pair, if not divorce forever. I won’t tell Maggie Gallagher if you don’t.
Cheers,
Katha