Castigate

Caitlin Flanagan, the author of Time Magazine's current cover story, "Why Marriage Matters," was on CNN this morning discussing divorce and the overall "success rate" of the children left in its wake. As you may know, this topic is of particular interest to me right now, since I've just begun to pen my opus for children of divorce called, "Are You My Mother...'s New Boyfriend?"


Now available in soft cover! For when you can't find a pillow on which to cry yourself to sleep.

Here's Flanagan's thesis statement:

An increasingly fragile construct depending less and less on notions of sacrifice and obligation than on the ephemera of romance and happiness as defined by and for its adult principals, the intact, two-parent family remains our cultural ideal, but it exists under constant assault. It is buffeted by affairs and ennui, subject to the eternal American hope for greater happiness, for changing the hand you dealt yourself.

How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass.

I'll give you the hardship and misery part, but let's talk about the children, shall we? The crux of the article is this: children of divorce wind up being dropouts, drug addicts and criminals, and thus marriages shouldn't end, to avoid this eventuality. Fascinating. But whose job is it to save all these faltering marriages Americans seem to be embroiled in? Unfortunately, most of the brunt is borne by the women, it appears.

Case in point: in every example of high profile divorce used on the TIME site, the men and their infidelity were the reason for the couple's split. (Jon and Kate Gosslein, Gov. Eliot and Silda Spitzer, John and Elizabeth Edwards and Gov. Mark and Jenny Sanford are the profiled pairs. Note that the latter two marriages are still publicly intact.)

So Silda and Elizabeth are the unsung and virtually silent heroes in these high profile near-divorces, while the men in their lives have all but destroyed their most sacred relationship and made it something profane.

Now let's get this straight. Staying married to a man who cheated on you is supposed to teach your children what, exactly? That even when someone betrays you and lies about it (and is perhaps only remorseful because television cameras force him to be) that you should subject yourself to a false "second chance" with that person in order to set a proper example? Two-parent families are only a proper example of what civilized society should look like when what's going on in those families is proper and civil. So many women (and certainly some men, too) sacrifice for their families by remaining in broken relationships, which is of course noble and in a sense, commendable. But the real sacrifice should've been made by the adulterer/criminal/liar, not having acted out on whatever selfish urge crept up in him to begin with.

The problem with Flanagan's article is that it's loaded with quotes trying to berate women into feeling like they have to keep terrible men in their lives - FOR THE SAKE OF THE KIDS. Here's one:

Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home. "As a feminist, I didn't want to believe it," says Maria Kefalas, a sociologist who studies marriage and family issues and co-authored a seminal book on low-income mothers called Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. "Women always tell me, 'I can be a mother and a father to a child,' but it's not true." Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on a child. "The mom may not need that man," Kefalas says, "but her children still do."

"The mom may not need that man?" Of course she does! Everyone with a child needs the other parent of the child. If humans were able to raise children alone, we'd be able to make children alone. After a divorce, many children (like my daughter) end up being raised by both parents separately, via joint custody and/or visitation. That's wonderful for the child, since having a loving relationship with both parents is clearly preferable to having one parent absent entirely. But, as this article suggests, the real benefit of a child having two parents is the chance for that child to witness the power of two people who love and respect each other and to benefit from the security that creates. Once that mutual respect is broken, the relationship is broken, even if it's still technically together.

And so let's place the blame for that wound where it belongs, on the offender, not the victim. Women too often feel pressure to completely abandon themselves for the sake of their children, and that cannot send a positive message, especially to young girls.

Toward the end of the article, the quotes do seem to perhaps take a few jabs at fathers who think they may be able to simply gloss over their infidelity/criminality/lying by playing the role of the responsible Daddy, unable to maintain his duty toward his wife, but ever-faithful, at least financially, to his children:

"Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal." - David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values

No article about divorce would be complete without a reference to pop-culture parents Jon and Kate Gosselin, and so here's Flanagn's take on the OctoMomAndDad's demise:

"Jon had gotten bored with being bossed around by Kate, he'd had a fling with a 23-year-old teacher, and the couple had filed for divorce. He still loved the kids, he said — with complete guilelessness, as though loving the kids and doing right by them were unrelated events."

My point exactly, Caitlin. Who can blame Kate for leaving? Jon cheated. Boom. No, Kate is not a perfect person (and for my part, neither am I) but ultimately Jon was the one who ended the marriage, both with his affair and by contacting a divorce lawyer. In my personal plight, my husband spoiled our union with his actions, and I refuse to regret leaving. I struggled in silence for over a year with my decision, and of course my daughter was my main concern in that. I went to couples counseling. I prayed. Finally, I decided, after months of listening to my then two-year-old say things to her father and I like, "Guys, stop talkin' like that!," it was time to make a change. As a child of divorce myself, I can relate to Kate's charge of feeling like she's failed, because I never wanted to bring a child up in a broken home. And I'm not. Now that I'm single and out of a marriage that had become a sham, my home is whole again.