The Cost of Divorce

Not a happy picture.  Here's an interview with Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (review here).  Excerpts:

...How does divorce affect how the children of divorce read the Bible?

Let's take, for instance, the parable of the Prodigal Son. The children of divorce don't focus on the end of the story, when the child comes home and is welcomed by a loving parent. They focus on the beginning of the story, when someone leaves the family home. For them, it's not the child who leaves the home; it's the parent.


Their lives look more like the parable of the Prodigal Parent.

They think about the initial departure of their father or mother, which caused the divorce, or about the many comings and goings that occurred in their families throughout their childhoods because both of their parents worked. They lived separately. They dated. They remarried.

Young adults from divorced families were seven times more likely to strongly agree with the statement, I was alone a lot as a child. They say things like, I was the one who was at home trying to keep the house together, trying to keep a family unit together. One young woman told me, "When I hear the parable about the Prodigal Son, I always think maybe one of these days my dad will decide to come back, too."

How sad.

Then you realize that the parable is supposed to illustrate God's love and compassion and presence-the ever-present, steady, everlasting presence. But children of divorce see themselves in the role of the father waiting for the child to come home; that's the role of God in the story. They have to be their own protector. They have to be the one waiting in the doorway for someone else to come home. It's a scary and anxiety-producing place for a child...

The rest of the article is just as moving and just as enlightening.

Also, this is profoundly sad. A fact sheet for divorcing parents about the effects on their children, it is the oddest combination of attempted neutrality and blunt summary of the traumatic effects of divorce on kids. They're trying to make sure they don't sound judgmental about the choice of the parents to divorce, but they can't honestly say that this isn't going to hurt the kids. It's kind of a remarkable document.

Here're groups that emphasize the importance of fathers in the home for their children and for the mother.  A founder of one of the groups, David Blankenhorn, is featured here.

Then there's the evidence building on the costs of divorce to individuals, the local and federal governments, and future generations.  For one such paper, see David Schramm's "Individual and Social Costs of Divorce in Utah", summarized and put in context in his article for The Family in America.  There're differences of opinion between different advocates for traditional marriage about whether it's best to pursue an end to no-fault divorce or not, but they agree that the costs of divorce are mounting unsustainably.

All of this puts a different spin on the Catholic teaching on the permanence of marriage, expressed so plainly in the vows at a Catholic wedding.  There's also the Christian realism about the costs of cohabitation to relationships, including a rather high divorce rate, leading to the Church's insistence on no cohabitation before marriage.  From Christianity Today, we get a set of recommendations on how help heal marriages in the Christian churches.  From Touchstone, a discussion of how Christians are, in fact, opposing divorce as well as same sex marriage.

Finally, from Anthony Esolen, we get a profound meditation on the strength and sanctification of a couple who had many reasons for divorce, yet never did.  He brings the meditation home by widening its scope at the end to see the cosmic covenant between Creator and creature:

...What keeps people from believing that a good God loves them and desires never to be parted from them, unless they themselves should flee that love? Look in the mirror, and see the cause of despair in others. Do not repeat the words of the great divorcer at the bottom of hell, who says in his loneliness and misery, "I am my own, I am my own." Say rather, "I am a wayward child, and the one I am called to stand beside is a wayward child." Do not dare mull over your "quality of life" and your "fulfillment" — wrapped in a shroud of deadly self-regard, while the Lord of life, who dies to bring you to life, gasps for His last breath on the cross above. If anyone had grounds for divorce, He had; no one ever loved as deeply as He, and no one was ever betrayed as He. You, reader, have betrayed Him shamelessly, as have I. Yet He remains faithful, and waits for us, to bring us life:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.