The Better Divorce

I just read an article in the NY Times about the "good divorce" --  because the writer is so pleased her divorce was better than her parents. A lot better. My generation didn't know how to get a divorce I suppose because we hadn't had parents who divorced, so we didn't know how. When I went to high school in the '60's there was one student, as far as I knew, in the entire high school whose mother was divorced. It was a big deal. The girl's identifying characteristic, so to speak. People had parents (as one learned later) who drank. "Admit it, everyone knew," said one of my classmates later. "My father was a lush." There were parents who were skirt-chasers, who molested their children (again we hear of it 50 years later); who were mentally ill (those kids lived in total isolation, fear, shame, anguish); parents who argued, threw dishes at one another, and so on....But mostly the Boomer Generation had parents who stuck together. Unless they lived in California which, as far as we were concerned, was another country. A country of divorced parents and wild kids.

I only write this because I personally had so little direct contact with divorce in my life (my husband and I have managed to stay married a very long time) until my son -- already a father -- separated from his girlfriend. I had no idea of the impact on our grandchild who was only one at the time. I assumed he would be okay. After all he was growing up mostly with separated parents so that was the world he knew. But I was wrong. From the very beginning, it was clear he relished having his parents together. On the few occasions when his Mom and Dad were in the same room -- holidays, for example -- he so delighted in the moment. "Look, Mom, there's Daddy." he'd say with joy and wonder. Now he simply misses the parent he's not with. We have a photograph from the one Christmas the three were together. Actually it's a triptych with one photograph of my son, the Dad, on the left, a picture of the baby with Mom in the middle and a picture of Mom on the right. The picture hangs in the bathroom, over the toilet. Every time my grandchild stands on the toilet after peeing so I can help him wash his hands in the adjacent sink, he studies that picture. I study it too. We both are sad for a moment together. We both wish that little family had stuck together. But my "daughter-in-law" (that's what I consider her) is like many young women of that generation. Her parents (the Boomer generation) had a horrendous divorce when she was in her teens. It was an awful experience in every respect. She seems determined to circumvent that emotional upheaval by not committing to marriage in the first place. I don't entirely blame her. My son was hugely immature when they got together. At the time he didn't have a job, didn't take care of the house; he was largely irresponsible. No wonder she kicked him out. I believe, of course, that he could have grown into the responsibility motivated by his love of being a father. But she didn't give it time to happen. Maybe she saw herself as forestalling the eventual agony. But the agony is there anyway whether it comes early or late...And it's especially present for our grandchild. Of course we all pitch in, both parents and grandparents, to care for him and make sure he feels loved at every moment. But his missing, his sense of disappointment that both his beloved parents aren't present in his life at all times, is palpable. That bit of sadness is woven into who he is just like his marvelous sense of humor, his huge imagination, his tenderness. No there is no good divorce, I don't believe -- not when children are involved. There's simply a "better divorce". It's not simply that math scores slip (as national studies seem to indicate) -- it's the child's sense of an intact universe, a sense of completeness, of wholeness that's lacking. That's what our grandchild has to compensate for, has to struggle to achieve. Maybe this early separation beats the other sort -- it's surely better than a hostile, violent marriage.  But I wish my grandchild had the best of everything ( not materially but emotionally) and that's not possible when his parents are split. I honestly believe he experiences a core psychic split that will heal in some fashion, but will always exist...like invisible scar tissue. So, yes, there are better divorces but, for children, not good divorces.