The divorce generation
- Aug 16, 2011 -
There’s a new book out that describes a demographic group the author calls the “divorce generation.” This is not the generation that divorced most — it’s their kids.
Generation X, according to investigative journalist and author Susan Gregory Thomas, “went through its all-important, formative years as one of the least-parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history.”
“In Spite of Everything: A Memoir” is Susan Gregory Thomas’s story that begins with her parents’ divorce when she was 12. This touched off a troubled adolescence, marked by “chain smoking, doing drugs, getting kicked out of schools, spending a good part of my senior year in a psychiatric ward.” The author and her brother were, she writes, “members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 70s and 80s.”
Susan Gregory lived for eight years, with the man she would eventually marry. Lots of Gen Xers did that, as sort of a test run before committing — to answer the question: “Are we good roommates?” After marriage, resolving never to foist a split family on her own children, Susan Gregory Thomas repeatedly told her husband, “Whatever happens, we’re never going to get divorced.” But they did.
The will is there, and the resolve. Unfortunately, however, children tend to follow the marital trajectory of their parents. Many, like Susan Gregory Thomas, test the waters and cohabit with a partner before marrying him or her. But divorce rates are 48 percent higher for those who live together before marriage.
The good news is divorce rates peaked around 1980 and are now at their lowest level since 1970, when their meteoric rise began. The bad news is they are still way too high.
Children of divorce often hear, “Sometimes it’s better your parents parted; everyone is happier.” They see statistics showing that 80 percent of divorced adults say they’re happier afterward. But our author writes, “A majority of their children feel otherwise.” And happiness can be an elusive indicator of well-being.
Elizabeth Marquardt, head of the Manhattan-based Center for Marriage and Families, challenged a recent report from the research organization, Child Trends, that showed the happier the parents’ relationship is, the happier, better socialized, and more successful the children are.
That may be, Marquardt says. But Child Trends didn’t even mention another of its important findings: The more traditional the parental relationship, the better kids did in all sorts of academic and behavioral categories. Children living with biological or adoptive parents did better than those living with unmarried parents. And results were worse for children living in married stepfamilies, and even worse for children in a home with one biological parent and a live-in partner.
Susan Gregory Thomas writes that she and her former husband, like many Gen Xers, try to maintain a good relationship for the sake of their children. Yet, for most children, living with parents in an unhappy marriage is better than enduring divorce.
Further Learning
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