From: alyoung@kiwi.ucs.indiana.edu (Amy Young Leith)
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women
Subject: Re: Why divorce?
Date: 11 Dec 92 18:34:01 GMT
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington

In article <7111@grus.cs.nps.navy.mil> shimeall@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil (timothy shimeall) writes:
>It may depend on what you mean by fighting.  Divorce is INCREDIBLY
>stressful on children, with many experiencing persistant continuing
>feelings of anger against one parent or another, or that they were 
>somehow at fault, or that a parent doesn't love them due to the
>divorce.  Being asked to choose which parent they wish to live with
>is extremely traumatic for a child.  Spend some time talking to 
>children of divorce -- the damage occurs on both overt and subtle

I spent plenty of time talking to children of divorce.  None of my
close friends from high school were living with both birth parents.
That surprises me a bit, to realize that I was *truly* a rarity.  I
had friends from all camps, too... some rich kids, middle class, lower
class, you name it.  The "close" friends I'm talking about number
about 9.  

>levels and continues for years -- and it builds with the number of
>divorces that kids go through. (I've a young (15 yr old) friend who 
>has been through three divorces -- this kid doesn't trust ANY 
>relationships or respect any authority; he has already been in 
>serious trouble with the law.)
>
>And divorce DOESN'T solve the problem of parent-parent anger -- it
>often exacerbates it and (by posing custody/support/visitation
>problems) makes the child a participant in parent-parent arguments.

Granted, most of the situations I've seen the child/ren were not used
as pawns, and things were clearly kept as a problem between the
adults, not a problem the adults had with the children, etc.  

>In fact, if parents arguments are confined to verbal disagreements,
>it may be beneficial for children to see their parents disagree, make
>up and resolve their disagreements.
>Of course, if there is physical violence involved, different logic
>holds.  No matter how damaging divorce is to a child, seeing one parent
>seriously injure or kill another would be worse.
>Nope, I'm neither divorced nor a child of divorce, but I've worked
>enough with children of divorce to recognize the damage.  Don't
>trivialize the damage of divorce by thinking that frequent (nonphysical)
>parental arguments are worse for children than the parental rejection that 
>divorce requires.

Jesus, I hardly imagine a few arguements would be reason for divorce,
even in the most frivolous people I know.  The friends whom I went
over this with said there was nothing worse than going home and
knowing that when you got there, all you'd hear all evening/night was
yelling and fighting, smart remarks, and things being thrown, at
times.  

Perhaps you felt I was overgeneralizing, and I didn't mean to imply
that divorce was *always* better in terms of affect on the children.
It depends on whether the parents are really concerned with the
child's welfare or scoring points for themselves. 

amy
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