Should
You Stay Together for the Kids?
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So
divorce often messes up kids. In itself, this isn't news,
though many experts feel Wallerstein overstates the case.
That divorce may mess them up for a long, long time and put
them at risk for everything from drug abuse to a loveless,
solitary old age is more disturbing-and even more debatable.
Ailsa
Burns, an associate professor of psychology at Macquarie University
and co-author of an Australian study on the long-term impact
of divorce on adolescents, is typical of Wallerstein's detractors.
"Her findings can't be generalized because she relies on psychoanalysis
instead of using standard research measures and a comparison
group of nondivorced families." [Perhaps in response to this
longstanding complaint, Wallerstein also interviewd children
of intact marriages for her new book.] Christy Buchanan, a
professor of psychology at North Carolina's Wake Forest University
and co-author of Adolescents After Divorce (Harvard) says
"there is some good research suggesting that many of the problems
that have been attributed to divorce in children were actually
present prior to the divorce."
Not
rigorous enough. Too gloomy. These are the leading complaints
against Wallerstein. Paul Amato, a sociology professor at
Penn State, has researched divorce and children for 20 years
in the U.S. and in Australia and casts the sort of wide statistical
net that hardheaded academics favor and Wallerstein eschews
as too impersonal. While he agrees with her about divorce's
"sleeper effect" on children-the problems that crop up only
after they're grown-he finds her work pessimistic. "It's a
dismal kind of picture that she paints," he says. "What most
of the large-scale, more scientific research shows is that
although growing up in a divorced family elevates the risk
for certain kinds of problems, it by no means dooms children
to having a terrible life."
Besides
her conclusions on children's long-term prospects following
divorce, Wallerstein makes another major point in her book-one
that may result in talk-show fistfights. Here it is: children
don't need their parents to like each other. They don't even
need them to be especially civil. They need them to stay together,
for better or worse. This imperative comes with asterisks,
of course, but fewer than one might think. Physical abuse,
substance addiction and other severe pathologies cannot be
tolerated in any home. Absent these, however, Wallerstein
stands firm: a lousy marriage, at least where the children's
welfare is concerned, beats a great divorce.
Those
are fighting words. And the shouting has already started.
Family historian Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never
Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, (Basic) questions
the value of papering over conflicts for the kids' sake. Sure,
some parents can pull it off, but how many and for how long?
"For many couples," Coontz says, "things only get worse and
fester, and eventually, five years down the road, they end
up getting divorced anyway, after years of contempt for each
other and outside affairs." And it's the children living with
parents who fight a lot who are more likely to suffer, says
Bryan Rodgers, a senior fellow at the Australian National
University Centre for Mental Health Research and co-author
of the forthcoming The Changing Family: Children's Lives After
Their Parents Separate (Blackwell). "Apart from short-term
distress, the loss of a parent doesn't seem to have much impact
on kids," he says. "But family conflict appears to have an
adverse effect on kids, including long-term behavioral problems."
Coontz
doesn't believe in social time travel. Unlike Wallerstein,
whose investigation is deep but rather narrow (the families
in her original study were all white, affluent residents of
the same Northern California county, including non-working
wives for whom divorce meant a huge upheaval), Coontz takes
a lofty, long view of divorce. "In the 1940s the average marriage
ended with the death of the spouse," Coontz says. "But life
expectancy is greater today, and there is more potential for
trouble in a marriage. We have to become comfortable with
the complexity and ambiguity of every family situation and
its own unique needs."
That's
just a lot of high-flown talk to Wallerstein and her followers.
Ambiguity doesn't put dinner on the table or drive the kids
to soccer practice or save for their university education.
Parents do. And parents tend to have trouble doing these things
after they get divorced. In observing what goes wrong for
kids when their folks decide to split, Wallerstein is nothing
if not practical. It's not just the absence of positive role
models that bothers her; it's the depleted bank accounts,
the disrupted play-group schedules, the frozen dinners. Parents
simply parent better, she's found, when there are two of them.
Do kids want peace and harmony at home? Of course. Still,
they'll settle for hot meals. >>MORE
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November 6, 2000
| NO. 44
SOCIETY
AND SCIENCE
COVER
: Is Divorce Bad for Kids?
A controversial book argues that the damage caused when parents split
is graver than suspected. Should unhappy adults stay together for their
kids' sake?
Viewpoint:
Katha Pollitt on divorce's bum rap
SOUTH
PACIFIC
AUSTRALIA:
Trials of the Regiment
The armed forces have fine policies on violence and sexual equity, but
have they the will to implement those rules?
T
H E A R T S
FESTIVALS:
The Pacific is rediscovered in New Caledonia
CINEMA:
Omar Epps hopes Love & Basketball is a slam dunk
BOOKS: Steve
Martin gets serious in his novella Shopgirl
Margaret Atwood's
sinuous tapestry of family secrets
A Ugandan novelist's
haunting look at his homeland
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
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