No ‘Happily Ever After’ in Divorce, Study Suggests

In the last few decades, a revolution has occurred in American families. For the first time, marriage is freely terminable. With the divorce rate hovering around 50%, Americans want to believe that no one will be harmed.

Many mental health professionals view divorce as a brief crisis. Separation may be difficult, theory holds, perhaps painful. But soon, all is resolved. Each partner builds a happier, more fulfilling life and children, ever resilient, survive unscarred.

But there is little evidence of this “happily ever after” in “Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce” (Ticknor & Fields: $19.95), based on Judith Wallerstein’s 10-year study of 60 California families. True, some who grab at second chances do triumph, Wallerstein and co-author Sandra Blakeslee write. What emerges more often from the study, however, is a portrait of adults and children who have experienced the sometimes tragic, lifelong consequences of divorce.

A Useful Solution

Wallerstein, a psychologist and expert in the field of family relations, isn’t opposed to divorce. In fact, she considers it a useful and necessary social remedy. However, time does not heal all wounds, she believes, and with divorce comes a weakening of unspoken moral commitments to children.

In countless psychological and economic ways, children of divorce don’t have the supports of counterparts from intact families, she argues. Moreover, she concludes, “we are allowing our children to bear the psychological, economic and moral brunt of divorce.”

Among her other findings:

- In only 10% of couples did both people reconstruct happier, fuller lives. Two-thirds of the time, only one adult, usually the person who instigated the divorce, is much happier. The others are “. . . significantly worse off, unhappy or lonely much of the time.”

- One-half of the women and one-third of the men are still intensely angry at former spouses.

- Two-thirds of the children have poor relationships with fathers, including fathers who were estranged and those who visited regularly.

- More than one-third of the good mother-child relationships deteriorated.

- During the decade after divorce, 35% of the children were “unparented” because parents were too needy or preoccupied to care for them.

Small Sampling

Wallerstein’s sample is small. It also may reflect some bias in that families agreed to participate in exchange for advice about helping children at the time of separation.

As founder and executive director of the Center for the Family in Transition in Corte Madera, Calif., Wallerstein has worked with more than 2,000 families in various stages of separation, divorce and remarriage. Her project is believed to be the only 10-year longitudinal study of divorce and encompasses every family member at 1-, 5- and 10-year intervals.

Reflected is divorce under the “best” of circumstances. Most of the subjects are members of white, middle- and upper-middle class nuclear families. Although many adults had seen marriage counselors near separation, they were not seeking help for other problems. Children were at appropriate school grade levels and never had been referred for mental health services.

‘The Same Play’

Not only did separation unleash fury, but, surprisingly, divorce didn’t end conflict. Rage remained so strong that 10 years later, Wallerstein says, “It was like wandering into the same play.” Instead of arguing in the kitchen, these former spouses scream into the telephone, usually in front of children.

Second chances, in reality, were not created equal. Some “come with three small children, a low-paying job and the ghost of a failed marriage,” she says. And a second chance at 45 is not equivalent to a second chance at 32. Not one of the women over 40 at the time of separation had remarried 10 years later.

Chances Better in 30s

Conversely, many women in their 30s established new careers and new families. Second-chance “winners” were men in their 30s and 40s at separation, many admitting they were repelled by their wives’ aging bodies. These men, entering the period of peak earnings, often married younger women and began new families. But older men felt set adrift by divorce, cut off from family and friendships, Wallerstein found.

Beyond statistics, Wallerstein re-examines some long-held theories, such as: happier adults raise happier children. In fact, she found what is best for one family member may not be best for everyone else.

“Unfortunately, the genuine love and tenderness between adults in a second marriage is not always shared with children who come from a previous marriage,” she says.

Women, Wallerstein also found, are reluctant to make too many demands on second husbands. When needs of children and husbands conflict, “many women tacitly admit they take their husbands’ side.”

Diminished Parenting

With divorce, adults become preoccupied, creating a diminished capacity, often temporary, to parent, she says. This may never be restored, leaving some children to rear themselves. There is 6-year-old Jimmy, for example, who comes home to an empty house, prepares dinner, puts himself to bed and gets up alone in the morning. Taped to the foot of his bed, in a childish scrawl, is a sign, “Go to sleep, Jimmy. Don’t be afraid.”

Wallerstein writes about deteriorating relationships with fathers. Although most children visited, 75% felt rejected by their fathers, leading the psychologist to conclude the quality of time isn’t as important as convincing children that they are valued. She also believes overall psychological adjustment of boys is strongly linked to the father-son relationship.

‘Sleeper Effect’

Wallerstein and others think divorce may exert a “sleeper effect” on girls, not really evident until adolescence and young adulthood. Girls were “derailed” by divorce, becoming anxious as they progressed into adolescence and adulthood, the study found. They also had difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships with men, and were fearful of betrayal, which they associated with their parents’ divorce.

Extrapolating from this study, Wallerstein concludes that divorce exerts a “chilling effect on (children’s) hopes, aspirations and achievements, and threatens the erosion of economic and social status of white, middle-class children.”

Although her findings are troubling, Wallerstein doesn’t think we should point the finger of blame at divorce. Thoughtful, attuned parents, she believes, can do much to help children confront life’s difficulties.