I recently learned that my name had been included in an article for Slate: “How Americans Became Convinced Divorce Is Bad for Kids.” The piece, by Gail Cornwall and Scott Coltrane, is a disjointed attempt to promote the “woke” theory that divorce itself—the direct dismantling of a child’s family—does not harm children long-term.
What is the real culprit, then? The authors tell us directly:
Most of the problems associated with being a child of divorce are instead related to sexism, racism, homophobia, shoddy recordkeeping, and insufficient government support.
The authors throw in everything but the kitchen sink and include over sixty links (except to my works cited) to make their case. For brevity’s sake, I will respond with three simple points.
1. The implication of the article is wrong.
Even the title assumes too much. Let’s back up and ask the obvious: have Americans become convinced that divorce is bad for kids? In all my work against divorce, I see the opposite.
Certainly, there was a time when Americans believed that divorce harms children, but those days are long gone. Since the Sexual Revolution, which spawned The Divorce Fantasy World, Americans have been taught that divorce is not bad for kids, that “Kids are resilient!” and “Kids are happy when their parents are happy!” The internet is flooded with “joyful co-parenting” photos and articles. Despite this ubiquitous cultural message, the authors insist there’s a “shared understanding” by Americans that children suffer long-term after their parents’ divorce.
We can test their theory by going to the pulse of the culture, which is social media. Try writing the following on any mainstream women’s Facebook group or media comment section: “People in unhappy marriages should stay together for the sake of their kids, because divorce harms children.” You will soon—and loudly—have your answer about where America stands on this issue.
The voices that claim that divorce is harmful to children are so few that one wonders if articles like the one in Slate are really about quashing the last dying gasp of a nation’s guilty conscience.
Interestingly, the authors themselves seem to admit by the end of their piece that their premise is untenable:
You may have noticed that we haven’t been able to cite any research to support the idea that the majority of us still mistakenly believe divorce commonly does irreparable harm to kids. That’s because the question isn’t asked by nonpartisan national surveys anymore.
And that brings me to the second point:
2. The article is largely an anti-Christian hit piece.
The authors claim they can’t provide evidence for their thesis because wide-scale research on the effects of divorce on children ended decades ago. Why ended, you ask? The authors blame conservative Christians:
The [narrative] influenced by sexism, racism, homophobia, and other types of fear prevailed. . . . As a result of the way the Christian right was able to frame—and effectively close—the policy debate, national solutions have focused on individuals’ decisions and bolstering the institution of marriage: choose the right spouse. Go to couples [sic] therapy. All but ignored is the government’s opportunity and obligation to families.
The authors decry the “conservative ‘family values’ movement” for running “pro-marriage PR campaigns” that were “deeply homophobic,” because they “promoted heterosexual marriage with funding from conservative groups.” They lament: “If national policy were based on research rather than zealotry, we would invest in children’s well-being” (emphasis mine).
There you have it! “We”—i.e., the government, through “progressive” policies and social programs—could quickly and effectively end the suffering of the children of divorce, if only the racist, sexist, homophobic conservative-zealot Christians would get out of the way and let the children be well.
Forget for a moment that the authors appear to be wholly unfamiliar with Natural Law philosophy or the fact that marriage as conjugal union (“bride-groom” presupposes “bride”) has been about the begetting and rearing of children in every pre-Christian, non-Christian, and even atheist society since time immemorial. Forget that marriage is the most ancient of human relationships, pre-political, pre-nation-state, and that its nature and purpose was not invented by the modern American “Christian right.”
Even on its face, the authors’ claim that conservative Christians are the problem here doesn’t hold water. After all, the one researcher with whom the authors take the most issue, and whose seminal research they equate with “zealotry,” is Dr. Judith Wallerstein—a Jewish professor who taught at leftist Berkeley, and who was herself surprised at the devastating findings of her own long-term study.
The intimate and primal bond of mother-father-child is not a modern construct dreamed up for American culture wars. Men and women of every place and time have always come together in lifelong marriage, and children have always been the natural fruit of marriage. Children have a natural right to be raised by their married mother and father, and to deny that is not a slap against the “Christian right” as the authors might believe; it’s a slap against Natural Law, human reason, and the collective human understanding and experience from the beginning of human history.
This brings me to my final point:
3. Are we losing our humanity?
Are we at the point where we believe that government— through bureaucrats, policy wonks, and social workers—can substitute for intimate human relationships? Can “good recordkeeping,” feminist activism, and LGBT ideology heal broken hearts and despairing spirits when a child’s mom and dad have stopped loving each other?
The authors believe that with the right government assistance and policies, the children of divorce will become as “successful” as children from intact families. But the “success” we see and measure on the outside can be deceptive. I hear this sentiment repeatedly from the adult children of divorce:
The kids may grow up to be successful, like I did, but the psychological damage will always occur in the child…You can’t tear up a child’s foundation of security (which is their parents’ marriage) and expect them to be fine.
The “successes” of school and career were, in part, because I felt the pressure to have it all together, since the rest of my life was so unstable.
I didn’t just lose parents, I also lost siblings, nieces, and nephews. My entire nuclear family disintegrated. Yet if you knew me only as a professional, you wouldn’t have any idea of what utter catastrophe my nuclear family represents in my world.
Yes, we may go on to live successful lives, but with a lot of baggage. For me personally, that means a past that still haunts me to this day.
It’s hard to fathom an authentically human argument that would suggest government programs and leftist politics as a cure for the loss of a family. I’m sure that our “progressive” authors realize that the profound grief of a widower, an abandoned spouse, or a mother who has lost her child can’t be made right by any form of bureaucracy, and so I pray that they will extend that realization to the long-term grief of the children of divorce as well.
Because in the end, the authors’ beef is not with “sexist, racist, homophobic” boogeyman Christians who oppose good recordkeeping, thwart sound research, and block government “services.” In the end, their beef is with the natural order of human relationships.