[humanser] 5 Ways to Make Divorce Beneficial to Your Children

Sun Nov 28 01:49:29 UTC 2010

MaryAnn:

I enjoyed this and thank you for sending it along.

JD Townsend, LCSW
Daytona Beach, Florida, Earth, Sol System
Helping the light dependent to see.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mary Ann Robinson" <brightsmile1953 at comcast.net>
To: "Human Services Mailing List" <humanser at nfbnet.org>
Cc: <blind-counselors at topica.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2010 3:46 PM
Subject: [humanser] 5 Ways to Make Divorce Beneficial to Your Children

5 Ways to Make Divorce Beneficial to Your Children
  Jane Smiley, Huffington Post November 12, 2010
  When I asked my older daughter what she thought of my divorce
from her father (she is 32), she said, "Do you really think I
wish we had remained in that suffocating little four-person
family?" But my daughter is a pro-divorce radical.  Even as a
teenager, when she dated boys from nuclear families, she was open
about how dull their lives were compared to ours -- always the
same few people sitting around after dinner, no step-brothers and
sisters, half-brothers and sisters, foster brothers and sisters.
Here we were with an extended family and none of the parents had
had to defy the prescriptions of Zero Population Growth (she is
strict about over-population).  It was divorce that gave her the
tribe of peers that she wanted, and she has never seen a
downside.
  I will say, though, that when I've defended divorce in the past
-- notably in an Op-Ed for the New York Times, the response has
been outrage.  In America, you are never supposed to treat
divorce with anything but appalled lamentations.  No type of
family is better than an intact nuclear family, ever.  That
millions of Americans have voted with their feet for other types
of families is just a sign of cultural failure, or personal
failure (the personal failure of the divorced ones, of
course--the married ones have at least kept it together, even
if...well, I won't go into the cost of keeping it together.  I
come to bury divorce, not to praise it.  Amen.)
  So, let me not praise divorce.  Let me just offer a few
suggestions about how to make it good for the children.
  1.  No United Front.  People are quite frequently eccentric.
Grown-ups quite frequently do not agree on basic issues like
discipline of the children, the balance of power within the
marriage, budgeting, running the household, sex, how the world
works, etc.  When they attempt to present a united front for the
children, this can come to be, basically, a lie, as in "Daddy and
I love each other very much, and we agree on everything,
especially what is good for you." If the reality is that Daddy
and I don't know what in the world we agree on or whether we
actually love each other, then the dissonance between the
presentation of the united front and what the child sees for him
or herself can undermine the child's sense of reality.  Once the
parents are divorced, Mom and Dad are able to discuss with the
children those things that they differ on.  That doesn't mean
either one can say, "Gee, your  is a full-fledged mindless jerk."
A better approach: when the child says, "Why does  do that?", the
parent says.  "Well, here is how  sees it.  Here are some reasons
for that.  It's possible to agree or disagree with that point of
view, but I see it differently, and here's why."
  A steady diet of this, I think, allows the children not only to
differentiate between the parents, but also to differentiate
between lots of points of view, and to develop a point of view of
his or her own.  Most importantly, his or her sense of reality is
not undermined by a determined effort on the part of the parents
to deny reality.
  2.  More Siblings.  I was an only child.  I've known only
children.  From this experience, I do believe that the children
should outnumber the parents.  Parents are powerful.  Children
need friends and allies as well as playmates and antagonists.
They need a cohort of peers to liven the place up and
counterbalance the parents' ideas.  Combined families often get
bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away
"the suffocating four-person" nuclear one is one that has
benefited all of them.  My daughters got step-siblings with whom
they have lifelong relationships and a half-brother they love,
and my son got an older step-brother who has been an excellent
example for him, and a good friend.  The only siblings I have are
half-siblings.  My nuclear family would have been an
extra-suffocating threesome.  Instead, I have an interesting
brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.
  Not everyone in my children's cohort has a relationship with
everyone else, but the relationships that do exist are important
to them.  However, you must let these relationships form
independently of you.  You can't force the kids to like each
other, though you can insist that they be courteous to one
another and you can forbid bullying.  And why shouldn't you? You
wouldn't let them bully school friends, would you?
  3.  Conflict Management.  It's good practice! Nuclear families
tend to get into patterns of conflict that last for years and
seem like normality.  Step-families have to be more
self-conscious about conflict management.  My most important
piece of advice is, the step-parent has to be the good cop and
the parent has to be the bad cop, and both members of the couple
have to do their jobs.  This means that if there is some
indulging to be done, the step-parent has to not only be willing
to do it, but to do it sincerely.  I mean, these are kids! They
are not kids you gave birth to, but they are cute and they are
inexperienced.  They also can be won over with gifts and
kindness.  There is no reason to take a stand or operate by some
authoritarian standard--as an intruder (in the eyes of the
children), the step-parent does not have that option.  If they
behave badly, then the parent's job is to correct them, and the
step-parent's job is to discuss this with the parent quietly and
reasonably behind closed doors when no one is angry.  Forewarned
is forearmed--the step-parent has to know going into the family
that these conflicts will come up and have a strategy for not
losing his/her temper and for persuading the parent to deal with
things.  The parent has to know that the children and the
step-parent have to learn to like each other.  Chances are that
members of a couple with step-children had plenty of conflict in
the marriages they have left, so now's the time to gain some
self-knowledge and some new techniques.
  4.  Love.  With luck, we learn more about love as we get more
practice.  Why divorce the father if we can't learn from it? I
never saw an example of conjugal affection and compatibility
until my mother married my step-father, and even though that
marriage was cut short by his premature death eight years later,
I knew what to emulate in my own adulthood.  My partner and I
offer a model of love that is kind, generous, affectionate, and
fun.  The children may or may not learn from it, but at least it
is visible to them.  Maybe, in fact, what it says to them is "if
at first you don't succeed, try try again." Is that bad? I don't
think so.  I would be very sad if one of them got into a bad
marriage and gave up.
  5.  Home.  Everyone agrees that home is good and instability is
bad.  The nuclear family is supposed to offer a domestic haven in
a scary world, and maybe it does.  And maybe this haven is to be
purchased at all costs--this is an individual decision.  But any
person or two people or three people can make a home, they just
have to be willing to do it.  When I was a child, my grandmother
and grandfather made a part-time home for me, and now I would be
sorry to have missed out on that, because they were vivid
personalities and I loved them dearly.  The home my mother made
was appealing, too--she could cook and clean and decorate and
welcome my friends.  My two homes had two different sets of
playmates and two different sets of activities.  Because my
mother was willing and able, I never felt strange in our
two-person home, and because my grandparents were loving and
involved, I never felt strange in their (our) home, either.  My
children were reared by joint custody--sleeping at each parent's
house an equal amount of time.  That they would feel at home in
both houses was our first priority, and, according to them, they
did feel at home, and also liked the change of venue.  In fact,
some of their friends were envious--two rooms? Two sets of
Christmas presents? As I said, children are materialistic.
  The heart is where the home is, but you have to make it
welcoming and homey.  At the same time, children who have to
negotiate two homes can learn to operate with flexibility and
imagination.  I remember reading in the New York Times that the
crop of soldiers and junior officers in Iraq were cannier than
their by-the-book superiors.  This was attributed to what they
had learned from divorce.  I kid you not.
  Divorce is based on the idea that we marry for love; you can't
have one without the other.  In cultures where marriage is based
on property (women as property, marriage as exchange of property)
divorce is much less common and love, at least for men, doesn't
have to be (isn't often) a part of marriage (ask your wealthy
French uncle if this isn't true).  Falling in love is an
expression of freedom and so is divorce.  Freedom is, as they are
always telling us, a responsibility.
  If we have the freedom to divorce, then we have to use it
wisely.  So far be it from me to praise divorce.  For that,
you're going to have to go to my daughter.  Or Newt Gingrich.
  Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist.  Her novel A Thousand
Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle
Award in 1992.
  B plus Alterationet Mobile Edition
________

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