Kids in Crisis 77
Hey wait, that’s my life you’re ruining. Regardless of their age,
almost any child is bound to feel an intense sense of rejection when
their parents divorce. Whereas adults may see it as one parent sim-
ply needing to leave the other and move on, the children interpret
the act as including them (i.e., “She left Dad, she must not care
much about me either. In fact, she may someday leave me, too.”).
Kids get angry at their parents for breaking what Dr. Wallerstein
describes as an unwritten rule of parenthood—“parents are sup-
posed to make sacrifices for children, not the other way around.”
Suddenly, no one gives priority to their needs, desires, and doubts.
Children of divorce feel intense loneliness, extreme conflicts in
their loyalty between parents, and also a severe sense of guilt. I
had one client whose little girl quite literally thought the divorce
was all her fault and said, “Daddy wouldn’t have left us if I had
just cleaned up my room like he told me to do.”
Children also tend to be rather obstinate in their refusal to accept
the finality of the divorce. Particularly if the actual divorce has
been preceded by numerous separations, each of which seemed
cataclysmic at the time, but ultimately turned out not to be final,
it is not surprising that a child will tend to view divorce as some-
how being a reversible process.
In fact, many children of divorcing families apparently do not
believe that the divorce is really happening until a year or so
later. Then, even after it becomes final, many children still refuse
to accept the divorce and are instead hoping and fantasizing that
their parents will reconcile. I have seen this behavior continue
even as long as five to ten years after the divorce.
Unlike their parents, kids do not view divorce as an event ac-
companied by any positive aspects whatsoever. They feel unfairly
robbed of their own kid-focused childhood. Divorce is the price
they pay for their parents’ failures. Ultimately, divorce may in-
deed be a positive opportunity for children, since there is consid-
erable evidence that a conflict-ridden marriage is by no means in
the best interest of the children. But kids certainly do not see it
that way at the outset.
All along the way, growing up tends to be tougher on children
of divorce. Their own evolving young lives tend to get overshad-
owed by the enormity of their parents’ divorces. All the kid wants