Kids in Crisis 79
kids are forced to accept and understand conditions set down
by a hurried and harried single parent: they have to share with
their siblings, their restructured family’s resources are limited,
and they must shoulder responsibilities that would normally be
beyond their years.
Adults seem to have come to treat divorce as one of life’s inalien-
able rights. Many are quick to jettison a marriage or relationship if
it fails to meet their needs or expectations—and rarely feel com-
pelled to blame themselves in the process. Children, however,
tend to place a fair amount of blame on their parents for having
failed at one of the primary responsibilities in life. The kids feel
they have been put on hold while the adults selfishly focus on
their own individual lives rather than on the family unit.
Deflecting the damage. In the course of my practice, I obviously
come into contact with huge numbers of kids whose parents are
divorcing. Based on my experience, I can submit the following
capsulized observations: (1) Most kids seem to absolutely detest
the entire divorce process and are particularly upset at where it
leaves them in its wake. (2) Although there are undoubtedly some
children who feel relieved to have their parents separate rather
than continue to scream and shout around the house, the old myth
that kids are better off with one parent who “really cares,” versus
staying in a tension-fraught household after a marriage has gone
bad, seems to be increasingly discredited. On the contrary, sur-
prising numbers of kids report back that, from their perspectives,
they would have preferred that their parents had simply stayed
together and continued arguing and fighting rather than hav-
ing separated in order to “spare them” from witnessing further
supposed stress. (3) Certainly there are at least some kids who
do experience substantial amounts of personal growth follow-
ing their parents’ divorce. This seems to be due primarily to the
multiplicity of diverse and often positive new inputs they receive
from a newly extended family and all the extra sources of stimu-
lation and role modeling that it brings with it. (This is the more
positive theory advanced by Dr. Constance Ahrons—and many
of us in the divorce profession would love to be able to believe it.)
(4) Unfortunately, the cold, hard statistics seem to indicate that at
least half the kids in a divorce context suffer serious depression,