92 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
Post-Adolescence
The trouble with the 1980s as compared to the 1970s is that teenagers no longer
rebel and leave home.
—Marion Smith
The entry into post-adolescent young adulthood occurs roughly
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. It is a difficult time
for all young people—divorce or no divorce. To really become an
adult, one must have established some sense of a separate iden-
tity during adolescence.
In the context of divorce, the adolescent period may be tougher
for girls (the daughters of divorce), but the problems faced by
boys during the post-adolescent period, when the time comes for
them to leave home, are generally trickier and more complicated
than those experienced by girls. First, boys and their mothers
do not generally exhibit quite the same degree of close mutual
emotional dependency found between mothers and daughters.
Instead, according to Dr. Wallerstein, mothers and sons are inter-
twined in a powerful “psychological foxtrot” in which they are
alternately drawn close together and then pushed apart.
Mama’s boys. Sometimes divorced women will turn to their sons
to take the ex-husband’s place—treating them as heads of house-
hold. At the opposite extreme, many boys feel pushed away.
Sometimes boys feel rejected for their maleness, as if they remind
their mothers of their fathers.
The interaction between mother and son often reaches a climac-
tic stage just at the time of adolescent separation, when the boy is
ready to leave home. Boys feel a strong moral obligation to their
mothers, yet they also instinctively perceive that it is psychologi-
cally dangerous for them to become too close to their mothers.
They fear being a mama’s boy. Because they are not protected by
a father under the same roof, they may come to resent being dis-
ciplined or emasculated by a woman.
Many people are surprised at just how difficult divorce can be
even for post-adolescent kids in their late teens and early twen-
ties. The impact can manifest itself in weird ways. An otherwise
outstanding young man may have an inexplicably unfounded